


Repeal and Replace

by ElChupacabra



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Affordable Care Act, Alexander Pierce Is A Dick In Every Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Bisexual Bucky Barnes, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Friends to Lovers, Gay Steve Rogers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Man fuck those guys, Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Slow Burn, Specifically Alexander Pierce is Mitch McConnell, Student Steve Rogers, and Brock Rumlow is Paul Ryan, lawyer bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2018-09-25 07:44:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 35,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9809837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElChupacabra/pseuds/ElChupacabra
Summary: The Republicans are repealing the Affordable Care Act, and Steve Rogers is going to lose his health insurance -- bad news, because Steve Rogers has Every Disease. After thinking through his options and getting no responses to dozens of job applications, Steve's best friend Bucky Barnes has an idea: what if they get married?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my first fic, and I was not planning on actually writing it, but man did it seem like a good idea to me, and no one else was writing it, so... yeah. I definitely have not finished writing it -- it's pretty well mapped out, but I should warn you that I am crazy-busy at the moment and it could be a while between updates. That said, I definitely respond to people yelling at me in the comments to update, so feel free to do that!

Chapter 1

Wan, early morning winter sunlight filtered through the dirty windows of Steve Rogers’s art studio. After considering the painting he’d been working on for the better part of the past week, Steve switched on the little radio he always had tuned to NPR. As he settled in to begin painting, Tom Ashbrook’s words began to register: 

“… Senate majority leader Pierce’s accelerated timeline for repeal of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, was narrowly approved today. Changes to the law are now expected to go into effect six months from now, rather than at the end of the year, as Pierce originally suggested. Speaker of the House Brock Rumlow’s replacement plan, which many are saying will not guarantee coverage to Americans with pre-existing conditions, will be implemented simultaneously, according to a statement from Rumlow’s office. So-called Rumlowcare will also turn funds for Medicaid over to state control in the form of block grants, which critics say…”

Steve shut off the radio, looking first at the tubing connecting his insulin pump to his body, and then to the pocket in his messenger bag where he kept his emergency inhaler. “Shit,” he said, and let his paintbrush fall, “What the hell am I going to do now?”

***

Bucky was distracted and gloomy on his walk home from work. Their firm was short-staffed at the moment, and he had been forced to do doc review all afternoon, which had done nothing to take his mind off his and Liz’s deteriorating relationship. After almost six months, it felt like Liz had been looking for more, and while Bucky wasn’t opposed to something serious, something about their relationship wasn’t clicking. He had tried to tell himself he hadn’t been avoiding her, hadn’t been putting off the inevitable, but the frustrated texts he had been receiving from her over the past few days confirmed it: they were headed for a break up.

He was still mulling over his situation with Liz as he got back to his and Steve’s Brooklyn apartment, and was greeted as he entered by the sound of rhythmic footsteps coming from the living room. Surprised out of his reverie, Bucky watched his roommate pacing back and forth, hunched over a little notebook and looking pale as a ghost.

“Steve?”

Steve startled when he saw Bucky, and offered a grimace Bucky could only assume was an attempt at a grin. He noticed a slight tremor in the hand holding the notebook. “What’s going on, buddy?”

Steve’s voice shook, “I’m just… ah, Bucky… I’m trying to figure out… just trying to figure out how much all my uh, my meds are gonna be, you know… without… without the insurance.”

“What are you talking about Steve? Did something happen to your insurance?”

“You didn’t see?”

“Didn’t see what?”

“They’re getting rid of it. They’re getting rid of the ACA. They’re gonna get rid of my health insurance, Buck.”

Bucky set down his messenger bag and walked toward Steve to put his hand on Steve’s shoulder, “Hey, Steve, it’s gonna be ok, I’m sure we can figure this out.”

Steve glumly shrugged off Bucky’s hand and walked over to the window, looking down at the street. “You don’t understand, Buck. I, God, I need this stuff, all of it, and it’s not cheap. Insulin, test strips, insulin pump supplies – just for my diabetes it’s gotta be more than $25,000 a year. My allergy shots are $5000 a year, and my Epipens run $500 a year, assuming I don’t have to use them. Then there’s the asthma meds that are something like $3000 per year, and all of that assumes that I don’t get pneumonia again like last year, and have to go to the ER or be hospitalized. I just, I don’t know how I’m going to pay for it all. I definitely won’t be able to stay at Pratt, they barely offer health insurance, I’m going to have to get a job, but jeez, Bucky, who’s going to hire me with three fourths of an MFA?”

“They’re not taking it away today, man, I promise nothing bad is going to happen to you, we will work something out.”

Steve looked up from the notebook at Bucky, and Bucky saw that Steve’s eyes were red-rimmed and watery, and he was clenching his teeth now in an effort not to start crying.

“I was thinking, maybe I’d transfer to another school, one with better health insurance,” Steve said, and Bucky could tell he was getting worked up again. “Maybe in a different city, one where the rent’s not so high. I hate to leave you in the lurch, with no roommate, but I could get on Craigslist, or maybe Nat knows somebody looking for a place? I – shit, Bucky, this messes up all my plans, it has to.” 

Finally too exhausted to keep going, Steve sat down on the sofa and buried his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking a little as he gave up fighting his tears. Bucky sat down next to him and started rubbing his back, catching a glimpse at the notebook Steve had been recording prescription prices in. When Steve had first decided to leave the graphic design job he’d been working to pursue an MFA, he had asked Bucky to look over health insurance plans, the two having mutually agreed several years earlier that, although Steve had many talents, evaluating long, technical documents was not one of them. Bucky remembered looking at the insurance Pratt offered and almost immediately rejecting it, pointing out that nearly all of the specialist visits Steve would have to make were excluded, and that a number of his prescriptions were not covered. If Steve stayed in his MFA program, the school insurance would be virtually his only option, and he would likely still be paying tens of thousands of dollars every year. Bucky wanted to reassure his friend, but he also knew that, without a dramatic change of heart from Pierce and Rumlow, it was unlikely that Steve would be able to complete his degree, or to complete it without going bankrupt. 

“Listen,” Bucky said, “I know this looks bad. It’s a shitty situation and I think you’re right to be upset. But believe me, you are going to figure this out, you’re going to be ok, and whatever help you need from me – anything Stevie, I mean it – you’ve got it.” 

Bucky, his hand still rubbing Steve’s back, felt Steve take several deep breaths. He looked up at Bucky and gave a small, but genuine, smile.

“Thanks, Bucky. This is, well, it’s a lot to take in, you know? Things have been rough since the election, and I know that’s not just me, but it’s different when it makes a difference for you, personally.”

“I know, buddy, it’s rough shit. We’re not going to be able to do much about it tonight though, so why don’t we make some popcorn and put on your least depressing documentary, and worry about it later?”

Bucky stilled his hand, squeezing Steve’s shoulder as Steve sighed and nodded. They both got up, Steve to make popcorn and Bucky to dig out the six-pack of Liz’s favorite beer from the back of the fridge he’d been saving for their six-month anniversary. So, he was a shitty boyfriend – under the circumstances he figured Liz would be hard-pressed to find fault with him for trying to comfort his best friend. And if she did, well, she didn’t deserve the beer.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just couldn't hold out, so here's chapter two. Thanks for reading!

2003

Steve was fifteen years old when he realized he was in love with Bucky. Steve was also fifteen when otherwise inexplicable weight loss and thirst sent him to the doctor, where he was diagnosed with diabetes. As soon as he had been discharged with a brand new insulin pump, and he and his mother had equipped their pantry with sugar substitutes and recommended foods from the list at the endocrinologist’s office, Steve went over to Bucky’s apartment and flopped down on Bucky’s twin bed.

“Just my luck, one more chronic illness to add to the pile.”

Bucky lifted Steve’s legs to make room for himself on the bed, and then let them fall back into his lap. “The way I see it is, the universe knows you’re smart and strong enough to figure out how to deal with all this stuff. Yeah it sucks, but you’re better at managing everything than practically anybody else would be.”

Bucky was drumming on Steve’s legs in his lap distractedly, and Steve felt the warmth he had recently put a name to bloom in his chest. “I don’t know, Buck, you’ve always been better at puzzles and stuff than me, you’d probably do a way better job at it.”

“Nah, I’m way too impulsive, I’d always be running around, forgetting my meds.”

“Don’t know if you’ve noticed but I’m not exactly the world’s least impulsive guy.”

“Yeah, but you’re a whole other type of impulsive – the pain in the butt, stubborn asshole type. You probably should be more careful, what with all this expensive medical equipment you’re carting around now,” Bucky said, motioning to Steve’s jeans pocket, which had the new insulin pump clipped to it. Steve ran his fingers over the pump contemplatively. “Probably shouldn’t go looking for fights so much.”

Steve sat up and put his hand over his heart dramatically. “You know I don’t go looking for them, not my fault that I’m always stumbling upon injustice.”

“Mhm, you’re a real vigilante superhero, pal, a regular Bruce Wayne.”

Steve punched Bucky playfully in the shoulder, “I won’t have you making fun of Batman like that, Robin.”

Bucky laughed, “Guess I should have seen that one coming. I’d rather be the sidekick though anyway, a lot less hazardous, the way I see it.”

“Don’t you dare try to lie like that to me, Bucky Barnes, you really expect me to believe you don’t want all the Batman glory? You trying to tell me you don’t want the Batmobile?”

“Hey, don’t get me wrong, if somebody wants to buy me a Batmobile I’m sure as hell not going to object, but making sure you’re not getting into too much trouble, that’s my number one priority, pal, until the end of the line.”

2017

Over the next week, Steve kept up with the paintings he had been working on, and in the evenings worked on his resume and started looking for jobs he thought he was qualified for. He wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea of going back to graphic design work, but he knew he was good at it, and if he could land a good job he wouldn’t have to worry about health insurance. Painting was almost definitely not an option anymore – without something steady, he knew there was no way he’d be able to afford his medical care. He wondered idly over the course of that week if he hadn’t made a mistake in changing his major from poli sci to fine art when he and Bucky were at NYU – he’d always been interested in politics, and it had never seemed more important than it did at the moment. Steve had satisfied his interest in politics by staying active with a few activist organizations and doing volunteer work from time to time with the Democratic party in New York. He even occasionally wrote a post for his friend Sam’s politics blog, but none of that felt like enough since Trump’s election. He decided that when he’d been hired and was making a regular income, he’d increase his monthly donations to the American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Senator Nick Fury’s reelection campaign. 

The only positive side effect of the anxiety Steve felt about his career and health was the fact that it distracted him from the ever-present anxiety he felt about his relationship with Bucky, which was always worse when Bucky was dating someone. Since the night he had first talked to Bucky about his insurance, Bucky had redoubled his efforts with Liz, spending every evening with her and distractedly texting her when he and Steve were together in their apartment. Steve had known Bucky long enough to know that this last burst of effort probably signaled the end of things with Liz. Still, he could never be sure – Bucky’s extremely ill-advised relationship with Natasha had nearly ended three or four times before they had decided they were better off as friends. It all would have made Steve gloomy on any other week, but luckily, he was too frantic about his own concerns to devote much energy to what he privately thought of as The Bucky Situation. “Que sera, sera,” he said to himself as he clicked through the tenth page of job ads. 

As he was beginning to feel depressed again, not seeing any positions that looked like a good fit, his phone buzzed with a text from Sam.

Sam: Hey man, haven’t seen your face in a while, having some people over tonight, you should come!!!

Steve looked at his computer screen, with multiple job site tabs open and at least four drafts each of his resume and cover letter, sighed, and shut its lid. 

Steve: Yeah definitely, going a little crazy over here, it’ll be a good break and it’s been too long for sure

Sam: Awesome! 8 PM 

Sam: AND NO MOPING

Steve grinned and set the phone down, and decided to take the rest of the afternoon off, having looked at so many job openings and company websites by that point that they had all begun to blur together. When he stood up from the table, Steve felt the effect of having sat for hours hunched over his computer. He stretched on his way to the bathroom, and turned the shower on, looking at himself in the mirror while he waited for the water to heat up. The previous week had not done him any favors, emotionally or physically. Steve could see he was paler than normal, and there were dark circles under his eyes. Although he was nowhere near as small and frail as he had been just a few years ago, he had lost weight since the election, and his face looked more gaunt than normal. Before Steve could scrutinize his appearance any further, the mirror began to fog up, and Steve shucked off his clothes and stepped under the hot spray. 

One of the many miracles about Steve and Bucky’s apartment was the incredible water pressure in their shower. The water hitting his back felt like a massage and Steve felt the tension begin to drain out of his shoulders. As he started lathering soap over his skin, though, Steve felt a more familiar tension grow. He tried, he really did, to avoid jerking off to thoughts of Bucky, but it was practically impossible not to at this point, if only because the habit was so deeply ingrained. Ironically, Steve started getting hard when he thought back to the day he heard about the ACA, which was the last night he and Bucky had seen each other. They had been friends for so long – practically their whole lives – and physical affection wasn’t an unusual part of their relationship, but over the past few years, casual, and even comforting, touches had become rarer. Steve had been too upset last week to react to Bucky rubbing his back, but over the past few days Steve couldn’t help thinking about it, and imagining how it would have felt if Bucky had let his hands travel down Steve’s back, or up to his neck, if Bucky had drawn closer, if Steve had put his head against Bucky’s shoulder and Bucky had leaned over to kiss his head… What if things had escalated from there? Steve imagined Bucky sliding his warm hands under Steve’s t-shirt, his fingers brushing fleetingly over Steve’s nipples, before reaching down to unbutton his jeans, smiling that coy smile and looking at Steve through heavy-lidded eyes, and raising one eyebrow, before wrapping a hand around Steve’s cock. In the shower, Steve gasped as he wrapped his own hand around himself. He closed his eyes, imagining Bucky licking his lips as he begins to stroke Steve. He’d say the sweetest, sexiest things while he stroked Steve’s cock, rubbing a thick finger over the head: “That’s right, Steve, God you’re so beautiful, just like that baby, look at you, fuck, come for me Stevie, you can come baby.” In the shower, Steve shuddered as his orgasm was wrenched out of him, and he bit down on his other fist to stop himself from shouting Bucky’s name. Spent, Steve slumped against the shower wall, the temporary relief of his orgasm soon replaced by that familiar ache of the knowledge that he and Bucky would never be together, which was always a bit sharper when he had willed himself to forget it again. 

***

After getting dressed in the first non-paint-splattered clothes he could find (he was going out, after all!), and digging around in their fridge for an astonishingly untouched six-pack, Steve took the G to the Williamsburg apartment Sam shared with their friend Clint, arriving just after 8 to find the party somehow already in full swing. 

“Hey man, you made it!” Sam said as Steve grinned and shrugged off his jacket. “And you brought beer!” he shouted to the rest of the room. A cheer went up before Sam put his hand on Steve’s shoulder, smiled, and said more quietly, “I’m really glad you came out, Steve. It’s good to see you, been too long.”

“Yeah Sam, I’m sorry about that, it’s been, you know, kind of rough these last few weeks.”

“No shit dude. This health care stuff is nuts, but did you see what’s going on with the National Security Council? Or that press conference yesterday? This administration is already going off the rails, and it’s only been a few weeks!”

“I’ve been pretty wrapped up with job applications and stuff, but I’m trying to make time to yell at white supremacists on Twitter when I can.”

“Hey, better you than me, man. You want to write something about the new health care law for Failing Media when you’ve got some time? I know people like reading about personal stories – Nat’s post about coming to the US as a refugee from Russia has gotten more hits than any other piece we’ve had since the election. You’ve got something valuable to say. You could change some minds. Plus, might be cathartic, a big ‘fuck you’ to Rumlow and his buddies in the House.”

Steve huffed a small laugh, “I appreciate that, I think I’m going to hold off for right now, just not in the right head space, you know?”

“Hey, no problem, but the offer’s always there.” Sam smiled again, a real, genuine smile that reminded Steve why he loved Sam so much. “Now let’s get you drunk!”

***

Two hours later, Steve was three beers deep, and practically enveloped by Sam’s plush sofa, half-listening to a woman whose name Steve couldn’t remember complaining about Trump’s new Secretary of State.

“My boyfriend met him, on a work thing I think, they got into this huge fight. Dario Agger’s a huge asshole, which I guess shouldn’t surprise anybody, given the rest of the cabinet President Comic Book Villain has put together. And think about what a huge scandal this would be if it were any other president! But Agger seems like a grown-up by comparison. Maybe he can keep Trump from starting a nuclear war with China or whatever, but the planet is definitely fucked.”

Steve nodded and was about to respond when a huge blond guy appeared in front of them and said, “Jane! There you are, I have been looking all over Sam’s apartment for you.”

Jane smiled up in amusement at him, “Babe, there are only three rooms in this apartment, you’ve been gone for an hour and a half.”

The blond guy threw his head back and laughed, “Come Jane, I wish to dance with you.”

Jane looked at Steve, shrugged, and took the guy’s hand, the two of them walking toward the center of the living room where a number of couples were dancing to one of Clint’s eclectic party playlists. Steve watched them dancing for a few moments, trying to tamp down his desire to be partnered and dancing with them, and was just about to get up for another beer when he felt a body collapse into the couch next to him. 

“Hey pal,” Bucky said, and Steve turned to take in Bucky’s appearance. He was still in his work clothes, but he looked rumpled, his tie was loosened and the top button on his shirt was undone. Steve noticed the dark circles under Bucky’s eyes had deepened since the last time they had seen each other. He had grabbed a couple of beers for the two of them, but Steve could tell it wasn’t Bucky’s first drink of the evening. 

“What’s up, Buck?”

Bucky handed him one of the beers and let out a long sigh, “Liz broke up with me.”

“Shit, Bucky, I’m so sorry.”

One corner of Bucky’s mouth raised in an unconvincing grin, “Ah, I saw it coming. It’s probably for the best.”

“Still, I know you were invested, and breaking up always sucks.”

“Can we just get drunk and not talk about it? I just want to get drunk, I’m already at least halfway there.”

Steve chuckled, “Yeah, Buck, we can get drunk.” 

An hour and a few beers later, Bucky seemed to be in somewhat better spirits, and as a couple neither of them knew had started making out on the couch next to them, Bucky had crowded into Steve’s space, the whole line of his body pressed against Steve. To make matters worse, Clint had turned up the music, and to make it easier to hear him, Bucky threw an arm around Steve and started speaking right into Steve’s ear. Steve was struggling not to squirm, the feeling of Bucky next to him overwhelming his senses, and making it difficult for him to pay attention to what Bucky was saying. Suddenly, Bucky’s words cut through Steve’s sensory overload.

“I was thinking we should get married.”

Steve froze and turned to look at Bucky. It didn’t look like he was kidding. “Excuse me?”

“I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, and I really think it could work.”

“Buck, what are you talking about?”

“It solves your insurance problem! Potts & Stark has great health insurance, and you could get covered and stay in school.”

Steve was speechless for a long moment. “So you were thinking about this, what, when you were on dates with Liz?”

Bucky looked sheepish, “Like I said, I knew things weren’t working out with Liz, and anyway, you’re more important to me than she was.”

Steve felt himself flush, “I really appreciate that, Buck, and that’s a really… generous offer. I can’t ask you to marry me though, God, I mean, there’s no upside to that for you, it’s too much.”

Bucky shook his head seriously, “No way, Steve, you know I’d do anything for you. Plus, I count three major upsides for me.” Bucky tightened his arm around Steve’s shoulders and began enthusiastically counting off the ‘upsides’ on the fingers of his other hand. “Number one, my best pal in the whole world doesn’t have to worry about paying for health care – and honestly Steve, that’s good enough for me. But I’ve got more – number two is, we can have a great big wedding with the best party any of these jamokes has ever seen, and a wedding registry so I can finally get that fancy espresso machine I’ve had my eye on. And number three, I can stop doing all this dating around with people I’m not even interested in, and my family will finally get off my back about ‘settling down.’ Plus, I was thinking,” Bucky went on, a little more cautiously, “we could, uh, work out an arrangement where we can still see other people, you know, as long as it’s discreet and doesn’t raise any eyebrows or anything. You know, if you want.”

Steve felt like cold water had been poured on him, “Right, right, yeah, of course we’d see other people. I mean, if we did this.”

“We’d have to set some ground rules, obviously, make sure we’re on the same page, but I think it could work, I really do.”

“Sure, um, that’s… I’ll think about it, yeah.”

“I mean, no pressure! It’s just, I thought it could help us both out.”

Steve looked down into his lap, trying to piece his thoughts together. “Tell you what, Buck, I’ve got a whole bunch of job applications out right now. Plan A, I’ll see if I get any bites on those, and maybe take a few more weeks to see if anything that looks promising comes up. Plan B, I guess… we get married.”

When Steve looked up, Bucky was beaming at him, the first genuinely happy smile he’d seen from Bucky in more than a week. He unhooked his arm from around Steve’s shoulder and held his hand out for Steve to shake, “Stevie, you’ve got yourself a deal.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't stop updating this thing! These two are taking a little longer to get down the aisle than I was expecting, but I promise we'll get to the fake relationship part of this fake relationship AU soon. Thank you thank you thank you for commenting and reading!

Almost a month later, the full repeal of ACA was starting to loom large in Steve’s mind, and none of the applications he had sent out had resulted in so much as an interview. At the same time, Bucky hadn’t brought up his proposal again, and Steve was beginning to realize that, even though he hadn’t taken Bucky totally seriously at the time, he had begun to think of their hypothetical marriage as a pretty good solution to his impending lack of coverage. 

He was surprised, then, when, during brunch that weekend, Natasha said, “You’ve got to talk your boy out of this marriage scheme he’s come up with.”

Steve nearly choked on his mimosa, and Natasha raised one eyebrow at him. “I didn’t realize he’d been telling other people about that,” Steve managed to get out.

“Yeah, he seems to think it’s a pretty good idea. I’m guessing you haven’t told him about the whole, you know, being in love with him thing?”

“Jesus, Nat!”

“What, you think that’s a secret or something? Honestly, Steve, you really couldn’t be more obvious about it.”

Steve felt himself flushing, “I didn’t realize everyone could tell.”

“Well, maybe not everyone. Bucky certainly doesn’t seem to have caught on. God, Steve, relax, you’re hardly the only one not immune to the Barnes charm,” Natasha said, pointing to herself and raising her eyebrows again meaningfully.

Appeased by her reminder, Steve took a deep breath and said, “To be honest with you, feelings or whatever aside, I don’t think it’s the worst idea in the world.”

“Feelings or whatever? Steve, come on, you’re smarter than this.”

“I just don’t think things have to change that much! I mean, we already live together, we’re friends with the same people, he’s still planning on seeing other people – sure, we’d have to pretend to be married around his boss and maybe a few other people, but other than that it’d really be no different than how we are now. Plus, I don’t go bankrupt, which seems like a pretty big plus to me.”

Natasha looked at him appraisingly for a long moment. “I’m not going to tell you what to do, Steve, you know I don’t want you to lose your health insurance and you should do whatever you have to do. All I’m going to say is that you should think carefully about this, think carefully about your emotional health as well as your physical health. They’re both important.”

“I promise I won’t do anything stupid.”

“Now that is a promise I know you’re going to break.”

“Ok, I promise I won’t do anything too stupid.”

Natasha smiled and shook her head. “I guess I’ll have to accept that.”

***

It had been a long day at work, and Bucky was exhausted as he walked up the stairs to the apartment the following Monday. Tony had finally managed to find some competent paralegals to review financial documents, so Bucky had been free to have the client meetings he had been putting off. He was wondering whether he’d be able to reach one of his more reclusive clients when he walked through the door to find the hallway strewn with rose petals and lit only by candlelight. 

“Steve?” he called out, “Steve, what’s going on? Did you have a date tonight? Hey man, am I interrupting a hot date?!”

“Shut the hell up Buck, I’m trying to woo you!”

“What are you talking about --” Bucky cut off abruptly as he rounded the corner and saw Steve, wearing a tuxedo t-shirt and a pair of jeans, on one knee in the living room. “Uh, Steve?”

“James Buchanan Barnes, you have been my best friend for twenty-two years, the best roommate a guy could ask for, and heck, you’re one of the sharpest legal minds out there. Would you do me the honor of adding me as a beneficiary to your health insurance policy, and becoming my husband?”

“So you wanna do it? You really wanna do it?”

“Jesus Bucky, I’m down on one knee, what more does a guy have to do to convince you?”

Bucky’s face broke out in a huge grin, “Of course I’ll marry you, ya punk.” He reached his hand out and Steve took it, standing up and throwing his arms around Bucky.

Steve pulled Bucky closer against him, whispered into Bucky’s ear, “Thank you for doing this for me, Buck. I really don’t know how I’ll ever be able to repay you.”

“You know you don’t have to repay me, Steve, I’m happy to do this for you. With you.”

Bucky felt Steve’s arms go slack around him, and then Steve was backing away, a crease forming between his eyebrows. “We, uh, we should probably talk about our… conditions for this thing.”

“Oh, right, yeah, of course, set some ground rules.”

“I mean, if you want –”

“No, definitely, I think that’s the right thing to do, so we can, you know, make sure we’re on the same page, manage our expectations and everything.”

Steve looked at Bucky searchingly for a few seconds, then shook his head and walked over to the coffee table, where a legal pad and pen were resting.

“You’re the attorney, wanna write us up a contract?”

Bucky snorted, “We can’t exactly have a legally binding contract if what we’re agreeing to is technically against the law.”

“I guess I hadn’t thought about it that way.” Steve sat down on the couch and looked up at Bucky, “Are you – is this going to cause problems for you, professionally?”

Bucky sat down and ran his fingers through his hair. “That’s really two questions you’re asking there, Stevie. Am I going to get fired? No, I don’t think so. We can keep the, uh, nature of our relationship to just a few people, people we can trust. On that front I’m pretty sure we’ll be ok. The second question is really, as a lawyer, is it acceptable to me to break the law? When it’s so clearly the right thing to do, of course it’s acceptable. In fact,” Bucky placed his hand on Steve’s shoulder and looked him in the eye, “if a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to.”

Steve rolled his eyes and took Bucky’s hand off his shoulder, “Jesus, ok Bucky, you don’t need to quote Thoreau at me, I get the idea.”

Bucky looked aghast, “Thoreau! Stevie, I was quoting Thomas Jefferson, what in the hell are they teaching you at that art school of yours?”

Steve just shook his head and shoved the legal pad in his hand, and said, “Stop showing off and start writing, buddy.”

“Hey, you know this showoff is your fiancé now, not to mention, if I’m remembering correctly, ‘one of the finest legal minds out there.’”

Steve turned away from him, but Bucky thought he saw a blush rising on Steve’s cheeks, “Ah, using my own words against me, I should have seen that coming.”

“You’re right, though, we should figure out exactly how we’re going to do this whole, you know, marriage… thing.”

“I was thinking we should start by figuring out who we tell and who we don’t. Um, I know you told Nat already.”

It was Bucky’s turn to flush this time, “She said something to you?”

“Yeah, at brunch yesterday. I think we should tell Sam, too.”

“Sure, that’s fine with me, Sam’s not going to say anything.”

“What about your family?”

“No, we’re not telling my family.” Bucky was emphatic.

“That’s… you’re sure about that?”

“Like I said, I, uh, I think they’ll believe it, that we’re married. And it will get my mom off my back about ‘settling down.’ Plus my extended family is so big, and they’ve got big mouths, all of them. I don’t know if we could keep a lid on things.”

“Don’t you think Becca will be suspicious? She’s always been able to tell when you were bullshitting her.”

Bucky flushed again, and shifted so he wasn’t quite so close to Steve, “No, I think she’ll go along with it. She knows… she knows how important you are to me. With how conservative some of my ma’s family is, I think she’ll get why we might have kept things secret.”

“Well that’s another thing, I guess – if we were keeping our relationship secret, why go and get married now?”

“Health insurance isn’t the only thing on the chopping block, you know, maybe we were real worried about marriage equality, we wanted to get married before it wasn’t an option for us anymore. Plus, it’s more important to be, you know, visibly queer now. Send a message.”

“Yeah, I like that. We’re making a political statement. Your family will buy that about me at least, for sure.”

“Obviously Tony, Pepper and Bruce can’t know, so that means nobody from work can know either. That shouldn’t be a problem.”

“All right, so we can tell Nat and Sam what we’re doing, but to everybody else we’re a real-life, happily married couple who definitely are not in this for the administrative benefits. Which means…”

Bucky looked at Steve expectantly, “Which means what?”

“Are we going to have to, like, kiss?”

“I think a few people are going to expect us to kiss, yeah. Is that going to be a problem? Are you trying to tell me something about my breath?”

Steve was bright red, “No, no, I just, I hadn’t thought about it is all. It’s fine. That’s fine. No problem.”

Bucky looked skeptical, but shook his head, “We can work out the, er, mechanics of that later.” Bucky paused and then said, “I think we should also talk about getting divorced.”

Steve grinned, “That’s not very romantic, Buck.”

“Ha ha. Seriously, I don’t think either of us are really planning on this being a long-term arrangement, but we need to think about what kind of situation would make you feel comfortable enough to end it.”

Steve sighed. “Ok, well, I definitely either need to have a job that has benefits, or there needs to be a policy in place that we don’t have to worry is going to be repealed.”

“That’s not good enough for me. I don’t want you working some place you hate, I think for us to get divorced, you should have a job you want to stay at long term, doing something that really makes you happy.”

“All right, I can agree to that, but I want to add, and I’m going to insist on this, that if you meet somebody and our… arrangement gets in the way of that, we end things.” Bucky started to object, but Steve continued, “Buck, you can’t even imagine how much what you’re doing here means to me, I’m sure as hell not going to stand in the way of a real relationship, something that makes you happy. Don’t argue with me, this isn’t negotiable.”

“Fine. Ok, that’s fine, Steve. Thank you for that.”

“And don’t go around not dating people because you’re worried about me. This is already, you know, above and beyond.”

Bucky sighed, but smiled to himself. “Like I’ve said a million times, I’d do anything for you, punk.”

Steve playfully bumped Bucky’s shoulder, “Jerk.”

“All right, that’s enough sentimentality for us, I think. Any other ground rules you can think of?”

“In terms of dating other people, I’d say, that’s ok as long as it’s discreet. Plus, cheating on your husband isn’t illegal, people do it all the time. We just don’t want to raise too many eyebrows.”

“Right, ok, so we can see other people as long as we keep it quiet.”

“You think people will be suspicious if they come over and see we have separate bedrooms?”

“How about you just move some of your stuff into my room, and I’ll move some of my stuff into your room. If anybody comes over, we just tell ‘em your room is the guest bedroom. You’ll just have to make sure the bed’s made and everything if we’re having company over.”

“Hey, how come my bedroom is going to be the guest bedroom?”

“Because your room is smaller than mine and you’re way cleaner and about 95% more likely to have made your bed on any given day than I am.”

“Yeah, all right, flattery’ll get you everywhere, pal.”

“I just call ‘em like I see ‘em, Steve,” Bucky said grinning. 

“So, that’s it, I guess, so long as we’re not forgetting anything. This all works for you?”

“Yeah, this all works for me. Now we’ve just got to set a date. How does, oh let’s see, next Saturday work for you?”

“That’s perfect, Buck, you know I’ve always wanted a spring wedding.”


	4. Chapter 4

“Steve,” Bucky called toward the bathroom door, where shower noises had stopped about five minutes earlier, “What is this playlist?”

Steve walked out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist, mussing his still-wet hair with another towel. “What’s up?”

“You’ve got a playlist here called ‘Wedding Playlist,’ I’m just wondering if that is some kind of a code, or if you actually plan on playing this at our wedding.”

“I’m sorry Buck, do you have a problem with my wedding playlist?”

“Steve, I love Nina Simone as much as the next guy, but we are not listening to ‘Mississippi Goddamn’ at our wedding.”

“What’s wrong with ‘Mississippi Goddamn’?”

“There’s nothing wrong with ‘Mississippi Goddamn,’ but it’s not a wedding song. You wanna listen to it when you’re doing laundry? No problem. Cooking dinner? Fine! Celebrating our marriage and having a party with our friends? That’s pretty much the only time I’m going to put my foot down about listening to a song about systemic racism.”

“Ok, I’ll take it off, but I’m going to replace it with a different Nina Simone song.” Steve grabbed the laptop and started clicking through the playlist.

“Steve.”

“What?”

“What song are you going to replace it with?”

“Um…”

“Steve, I swear to God, if you put ‘Baltimore’ or something like that on the playlist, I will divorce you.”

Steve looked abashed and Bucky could hear him clicking some more, “Any requests, then?”

Bucky thought for a moment. “You know, I’ve always been partial to ‘My Baby Just Cares for Me.’”

“What if I agree to put that on the playlist if we also play ‘Strange Fruit.’”

Bucky stared at Steve until Steve peaked his head from behind the computer screen.

“All right, all right,” Steve said, “nothing about racism, nothing about poverty.”

“Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah. Shouldn’t you be leaving, anyway? You’re going to be late for work.”

“Seems like I’ve got to supervise this wedding planning you’ve been doing so we don’t end up storming city hall with pitchforks instead of getting married at it.”

“Jeez, you make me sound like a maniac. I got the idea, no more protest music at our wedding, no more actual protesting, now go to work before you get fired and we have to call this whole thing off because nobody has health insurance.”

Bucky shook his head but grabbed his jacket and messenger bag. “All right, I’m leaving, text me if you need to discuss anything, and for Christ’s sake, buy a new suit!”

***

While Bucky worked that week, Steve made the few arrangements necessary for the wedding – he scheduled the ceremony with City Hall, reserved a table for their friends at their favorite bistro, bought two simple wedding bands from a neighborhood jeweler, accepted (after several hours of arguing) Bucky’s offer to buy a new suit for him, and ordered decorations for the mini-reception at their apartment and flowers for their boutonnieres. The last task on Steve’s list – inviting their friends – he put off for as long as possible. As it turned out, when he finally talked to Natasha and Sam over lunch that Wednesday, his hesitancy seemed to be justified.

“You’re doing what?!” Sam shouted at Steve, loud enough that customers at all the tables around them turned to see what was happening.

“We’re, um, we’re getting married.”

“Steve, are you out of your damn mind? Where did you come up with this idea?”

“It was Bucky’s idea, but we’ve talked about it, it makes a lot of sense for us.”

Sam shook his head and looked at Natasha, “Have you tried to talk him out of this, Nat?”

“I did before the, uh, proposal.”

“You gave me your blessing, Nat!” Steve said.

“Steve, that is a complete misrepresentation, I simply agreed that I wouldn’t be able to talk you out of it. I’m not saying there isn’t a certain logic to the idea, it’s just that I don’t want you to get hurt.” She looked up at Sam and he nodded at her, “We don’t want you to get hurt.”

Steve let out a long sigh, “So you know too, Sam?”

“About how you feel about Bucky? Yeah, I had my suspicions. For what it’s worth, I’m not convinced Bucky wouldn’t be interested in a relationship with you, a real relationship.” Steve snorted, and Sam continued, “That’s assuming, of course, that you don’t fuck it all up by having a sham marriage with all kinds of emotionally confusing rules and conditions.”

“How did you know about the emotionally confusing rules and conditions?”

“I know you two, that’s enough.”

“All right, just hear me out,” Steve said. “We’ve talked this out, Bucky and I, and it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement. We both have outs if it gets to be too much, but we both think that it won’t change our relationship too much. Plus, I’ll be able to afford my meds – I kind of thought you guys would be on board with that.”

“Well that’s an incredibly manipulative thing to say,” Sam said. Steve flushed in embarrassment.

“Sorry, you’re right. It just seems like the best thing for me right now. The fact is, we’re getting married, whether you two are there or not, but, well, we’d both like for you to be there.”

Sam’s expression softened, “Of course I’ll come,” and when he looked up at Nat, she nodded too. Sam continued, “We just want to make sure you know exactly what you’re getting yourself into here. Neither of us want you to get hurt, but if you think this is the best thing for you, we’re going to support you.”

Steve let out a long breath and felt some of the tension in his shoulders drain out, “Thank you, that really means a lot to me. I know this is pretty… unconventional, but I think we’re going to be able to make it work. And actually, speaking of making it work, you, um, you can’t tell anybody about it.”

Natasha raised her eyebrows, “I don’t know who would believe me if I did.”

“I’m serious. We wanted you two to know about our, um, arrangement, but you can’t tell Clint,” Steve said, looking at Natasha, “or Riley,” Steve said to Sam.

“That’s a lot to ask of a guy, Steve.”

Steve sighed again. “I know, and I’m sorry about that, but it’s really, really important that people don’t find out.”

“Ok Steve,” Natasha said, “I won’t tell Clint, and Sam won’t tell Riley.” Sam glared at Natasha. “Just promise us that you’ll talk to us if anything starts going wrong. We want to be here for you.”

“I can do that,” Steve said, “Thank you both for this. Trust me, I don’t see this as an ideal situation either, but it’s made everything that’s been going on a lot easier for me to deal with. Even though you’re not exactly enthusiastic, which I totally understand, I really appreciate having your support right now.”

“Yeah, of course, man,” Sam said, “Like I said, we’re here for you, and we just want what’s best for you.”

***

On Friday night, Steve sat on the couch, looking at the two ring boxes set on the coffee table. He opened and closed each box, imagining exchanging the rings with Bucky, imagining seeing his ring on Bucky’s finger, and Bucky’s ring on his own. Sam and Natasha were right; this was a dangerous thing to do. Their hypothetical marriage hadn’t felt real to Steve, it seemed like something that could be easily done and undone, a private joke between the two of them, a way to get back at a government and a society that didn’t care about him. But now, looking at their rings, Steve realized the joke and the reality were starting to blend together, and that actually marrying Bucky, reciting those vows, agreeing to love and honor for as long as they both shall live – that all meant something to him, and he didn’t know if there was anything he could do about that. 

He was startled out of his reverie by the sound of the door to their apartment opening. “Buck, is that you?”

“Hey Stevie,” Bucky said as he walked into the living room. “Those the rings?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Lemme take a look, I haven’t gotten to see them yet.” Steve passed over the open boxes, and Bucky made a hummed, looking satisfied. “Simple gold bands, classic. Good choice, pal.”

“Yeah, I thought that’d be best.”

“You ready for tomorrow?”

“Mostly, I guess. It’s all really starting to sink in, you know?”

Bucky chuckled, “Yeah, I know what you mean. I figure it’ll be kind of a weird day for us, but then things will pretty much go back to normal, minus some occasional acting, I guess you could call it.”

“You know, we’re going to be one of those couples who have never kissed until their wedding day.”

Bucky laughed again, “Well, I always knew you were a traditional kind of guy, certainly didn’t want to compromise your honor, not before I make an honest man out of you.”

“Ha ha,” Steve deadpanned. “I just – do you think people will be able to tell? That it’s our first kiss?”

“Stevie, the only people who are going to be there to witness it will be Sam and Natasha, who both know what’s going on, and the judge, who I’m sure is not going to give a damn one way or another.”

“I suppose, I guess I was just thinking…”

“Yeah?”

“Nah, forget it. And listen, while we’re taking this, uh, traditional approach to marriage, I think I’m going to stay at Sam’s tonight, so we don’t see each other before the wedding.”

Bucky’s eyes widened, “You sure about that?”

“Yeah, I am. I actually took my suit and some other stuff over there last night. I know it’s stupid, but this might be the only time I ever get married, and I wanna do it right, you know?”

“Sure thing, Steve.” 

“I’ll just, um, take that one from you.”

Bucky looked up to see Steve reaching his hand out, and noticed that he was still holding onto the ring boxes, and had been absentmindedly rotating Steve’s ring around his finger. “Oh, right, yeah. Here you go.”

“So, see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Bucky watched Steve nod, grab a small bag from the floor in the hallway, give him a small wave, and head out of the room. When he heard the door to the apartment close, Bucky let out a long breath, and wondered, not for the first time since he had suggested they get married, what exactly he had gotten himself into.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right, now you're all actually going to have to be a bit patient with me. The next chapter is almost done, but I haven't started writing anything past that yet, but I'm hoping to get back to it next weekend. Thank you again for reading this far, you're all beautiful, majestic angels and I love you.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to wait to post until this chapter was done, but a) It was turning into a bit of a beast so I split it in half (it ends a little awkwardly, I think, sorry about that), and b) I yelled a lot at my congressman today and I wanted to reward myself by working on this. Anyhow, hope you enjoy, thanks as always for reading, commenting and leaving kudos! You all are the light of my life!

The next morning, Bucky ignored his anxiety as much as possible, ignored the voice in his head that kept repeating, over and over again, ‘You’re marrying Steve today.’ He ignored it when he woke up, he ignored it when he showered, he ignored it when he shaved and styled his hair, he ignored it when he opened his closet to find his charcoal suit pressed with a sticky note on it that said, in Steve’s handwriting, “Wear this one,” he ignored it while he was hailing a cab outside their apartment, and on the drive to the courthouse, and while he walked up the courthouse steps. But he couldn’t ignore it anymore when he saw Natasha outside the courtroom, dressed to the nines in a satiny green dress, grinning at him and shaking her head. 

“Well, Bucky Barnes getting married at last, never thought I’d see the day. You’re looking awfully spiffy.”

Bucky laughed and shook his head dismissively, but he could feel a blush rising on his cheeks, “Aw, none of that Nat, besides, everybody knows you’re the real looker in this group.”

Nat laughed, “Ok, that’s enough, we’ve got some work to do. Do you know how to put on a boutonniere? I kind of… skipped prom.”

They spent the next few minutes fussing with the spray of blue hydrangeas until it was firmly affixed to Bucky’s lapel. 

“You’ve got the ring?”

Bucky had a moment of panic before he patted his trouser pocket and felt the box, “Yeah, couldn’t forget that, Steve would kill me.”

“Bucky, if you’d left that ring at home I’d have killed you before Steve even got here.”

“You know, I don’t doubt that. And hey, speaking of Steve, do you know when he and Sam are getting here? I think we’re supposed to be going in soon.”

Natasha didn’t say anything, she just motioned to the staircase behind Bucky. Bucky turned around to see Sam and Steve coming up the stairs. Sam was dressed up, too, and looking as handsome as ever, but Bucky couldn’t, in that moment, focus on anyone but Steve. Bucky knew Steve was an attractive guy, but he was always wearing t-shirts and ratty jeans – in part it was the ‘art student uniform’ that Bucky had seen all Steve’s classmates wearing variations of, but Bucky knew it was also part defense mechanism, to prevent people from paying too much attention to Steve. Today, though, Steve was dressed in a beautiful ultramarine suit that showed off his slim frame and made his eyes look even bluer, a crisp white shirt and a deep red tie. His hair, which had looked approximately the same since they were in eighth grade, had been cut and styled, and apparently by someone with either more skill or more direction than Steve’s usual barber at SuperCuts. The sides were trimmed close, and the top looked artfully tousled, with significantly more volume, and, could it be?, hair product applied judiciously. Bucky only realized he had been staring slack-jawed at Steve for several seconds longer than was socially appropriate when Sam snapped his fingers in front of Bucky’s face. 

“Earth to Bucky! You ok, man?”

“Oh, yeah, hey Sam. Thanks for coming today.”

Sam laughed, “No problem, Bucky, you guys ready to get married?”

Bucky and Steve looked at each other and grinned. Steve said, “No time like the present, I guess.”

“How are we doing this?” Bucky asked. “I guess we’ve already seen each other, no point in one of us doing that slow walk down the aisle.”

“No, I guess not. Besides, I’d rather walk up there with you – what do you say?”

Bucky shrugged and smiled, and then held out his arm for Steve to take. “Why don’t you two head in,” Steve said to Sam and Natasha, “We’ll be in in just a minute.”

Sam took Natasha’s arm and they walked into the courtroom. Steve turned to Bucky after the door had closed. “You’re 100% sure you want to do this? There’s still time for us to cancel, if you’re having any doubts or concerns at all and need to talk more about it –”

“Steve, Steve, calm down, buddy. Of course I still want to do this, as long as you do too. This was my idea, remember? I haven’t changed my mind about it since I suggested it, and I’m not going to, ok?”

“Ok, ok, thanks Bucky. I just, the reality is sinking in, you know?”

“Yeah, I’m right there with you, but we’re going to be fine.” Bucky held out his arms, and Steve sagged against Bucky, wrapping his arms around Bucky’s back.

“No one I’d rather be fake-marrying, Buck.”

“Same here, you punk. Now what do you say we go in there and get hitched?”

Bucky felt Steve laugh a little, and when he pulled back from their hug his eyes looked wet but he was smiling happily. “Yeah, let’s do it.”

***

The city hall judge smiled at Bucky and Steve as they walked, hand in hand, into the courtroom. “It’s a pleasure to meet you young men,” she said, “Are you ready to get married?”

Bucky and Steve looked at each other and smiled, and said together, “We are.”

“So have you written your own vows, or do you want the traditional ceremony?”

“Just the traditional ceremony, I think, right Steve?” Steve looked at Bucky a little sheepishly, but nodded.

“Yeah, just the standard vows would be good.”

“All right then, let’s begin! We are gathered here today to witness the exchanging of marriage vows between James and Steven. If there is anyone present today who knows of any reason why this couple should not be married, let them speak now or forever hold their peace.” The judge looked at Sam and Natasha, but they both simply smiled at her genially. “James and Steven, please face each other and join hands.” Bucky took Steve’s hands in his, and gave them a reassuring squeeze. Steve smiled gratefully at him. “Do you, James, solemnly declare that you take Steven to be your husband?”

“I do,” Bucky said.

“Do you promise to love, honor, cherish, and keep him for as long as you both shall live?”

Bucky took a deep breath, “I do.”

“As a symbol of your promise, please place the ring on his finger.”

Bucky pulled out the box from his pocket, and removed the ring. As he took Steve’s ring finger in his hand, he felt his eyes watering against his will. Steve didn’t seem to notice, too intent watching Bucky slide the ring onto his finger. He kept staring at his finger after the ring was on, and Bucky squeezed his hand again to make sure he was ok. Steve looked up and gave Bucky a small smile before turning his attention to the judge. 

“Do you, Steven, solemnly declare that you take James to be your husband?”

Looking back at Bucky, Steve responded, “I do.”

“Do you promise to love, honor, cherish, and keep him for as long as you both shall live?”

“I do.”

“As a symbol of your promise, please place the ring on his finger.”

Bucky felt Steve’s hands shake a little as he took Bucky’s left hand and placed the ring on his finger. 

“You have consented to be united in the bonds of matrimony, and you have exchanged your wedding vows before all those present today. Therefore, by the powers vested in me by the great state of New York, I now pronounce you husbands. You may seal your vows with a kiss.”

Bucky caught Steve’s eye and waggled his eyebrows, which drew a laugh out of Steve. Then, before he could think about it too much, he leaned in and kissed Steve. He meant for it to be something quick, but it was an unexpectedly tender kiss from the moment their lips touched, and Bucky had to resist his sudden urge to wrap his arms around Steve. Instead, Bucky took a step back, and took in the sight of Steve, flushed pink to his ears, and felt like he was seeing him with new eyes. Before he could say anything to Steve, Natasha and Sam walked up to them, and they all took turns hugging. As they got ready to leave the courtroom, Steve held out his hand for Bucky to take, and Bucky had to suppress a shiver when he felt the metal of Steve’s wedding ring against his palm. 

“Looks like you’re stuck with me, pal,” Bucky said.

“I think what you meant was, you’re stuck with me, husband,” Steve said, one eyebrow raised.

Bucky laughed, “Boy, now that’s something. But you’re right, husband. Are you ready to get drunk, husband?”

“Mm, I’m not sure we’re quite done running the gauntlet yet.” Steve motioned at Sam, who had his camera out and was looking determined.

“Come on lovebirds,” he said, “Time for your close-up! I can’t wait to get this shit on Facebook, Bucky your mom is going to freak.”

Bucky groaned. “God, don’t remind me, Sam.”

“Come on,” Steve said, “let’s get this over with, and then you can have all the champagne you want.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

***

Once Sam was satisfied with the photos he had taken, Steve and Bucky got in a cab and directed the driver to the restaurant Steve had made a reservation with. Not even a minute into the cab ride, Bucky’s phone started buzzing.

“Shit,” he said, looking at the number flashing on the screen, “it’s my ma.”

Steve laughed. “She’s going to chew you out, you better get it over with.”

“Can’t I just let it ring to voicemail? She’ll just think we’re celebrating!”

Steve just stared at Bucky until Bucky groaned and answered the phone.

“Hi, Ma.”

“James Buchanan Barnes, what is this I’m seeing on Facebook from this Samuel Wilson person about you getting married to Steven?”

“Well, uh, we got married…”

The line was silent for a disconcerting period, and then there was a shrieking noise that Bucky had to assume was coming from his mother. He looked over at Steve for help, but he was doubled over in his seat, giggling helplessly.

“Ma, are you ok?”

“James, I cannot believe you would keep this from me! Your own mother! And Steven, your best friend! How could you not have told me? And at City Hall! With no family there!”

“I swear we wanted to tell you, Ma, but we started getting nervous about the, uh, political climate, and we just didn’t want to wait.” Bucky looked at Steve again, now mostly recovered from his giggling fit, but Steve just made a ‘go on’ motion with his hand. “We just, uh, didn’t want anything to get in the way. You know, of our love. Because we’re really in love, Ma.”

“Real convincing,” Steve whispered, rolling his eyes. 

“James Barnes, you know I love you and I want you to be happy. If you are happy, I am happy. But I also want you to know that I am extremely angry. We will be talking about this again. Soon. Now go enjoy your reception.”

Bucky let out a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Ma, I am really sorry. I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Ok, I love you, ok? Bye James.”

“Bye Ma, love you too.”

Bucky hung up the phone and gave Steve, laughing again, an unimpressed look. “Thanks for the help, pal.”

“I’m sorry! She’s so funny when she gets mad like that. But you know it’s because she loves you and wants what’s best for you, Buck.” All of a sudden Steve looked somber. “You’re lucky in a lot of ways, you know, just to have her yell at you. Just to have her be mad with you.”

“Yeah, I know, Steve. I wish you had the opportunity to have your mom yell at you today, too.”

Bucky reached out and squeezed his shoulder, and Steve smiled. “Me too, Buck. Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I totally stole this ceremony from Youtube videos of ceremonies at NYC City Hall, so if it felt short that's because the real ceremony literally lasted two minutes. On a tangential note, I'm technically an ordained minister and can perform weddings, so if any of you lovely readers are looking to get married, I would be happy to officiate as a thank you for reading :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's 2 AM and I have not edited this so apologies if there are weird typos or tense issues. Also, sorry about Darcy's weird characterization?? That went off the rails on me a little bit. Anyway, enjoy part 2 of the wedding day!

When Steve and Bucky got to the restaurant, they found that Natasha, Clint, Sam and Riley were already seated. Bucky grabbed Steve’s arm before they made it to the table. Steve turned around, looking confused. “What’s up, Buck?”

“We’re married now, Stevie.”

“Yeah, no kidding buddy,” Steve said, flashing his wedding ring at Bucky.

“No, I just mean, we have to remember to act like a married couple – Riley and Clint don’t know, right? Just, think about how we’d be if, you know, this was for real.”

Steve looked down for a moment, and then, seemingly out of nowhere, his lips were against Bucky’s ear and his arm was tight around Bucky’s waist. He whispered, “They’re all sitting there wondering why we stopped, so look scandalized, I’m telling you all the things I’m going to do to you when we get home.”

Bucky shuddered and didn’t even have to try to look scandalized, Steve’s breath on his ear enough to make his entire body go hot.

“That’s good, Bucky, that should sell ‘em,” and then Steve kissed the side of Bucky’s mouth, smirked, and walked over to the table to the sound of Riley and Sam’s enthusiastic wolf whistles. 

“Well look who it is!” Clint said, “What could possibly have taken you two so long to get here? Already taking advantage of your spousal rights?” Clint gave Steve a lascivious wink. “I hope you gave the cab driver a good tip.”

Steve and Bucky sat down next to each other, finding champagne already in buckets on the table, and two glasses waiting for them. “Er, actually, Bucky got yelled at by his ma during the cab ride, so it wasn’t quite so… romantic.”

“Oh no, incurred the wrath of Freddie, huh?” Riley asked, “Can’t imagine why she would have been upset about her son getting hitched with no warning.” Riley’s eyebrows were raised as if to say, ‘she wasn’t the only one upset about you getting hitched with no warning,’ but he smirked at them after a moment and let the unspoken question drop. 

“Well, we can’t let family drama get in the way of getting you boys intoxicated on your wedding night,” Sam said as he took one of the champagne bottles off the table and carefully pried the cork off, “let’s have those glasses here.”

Sam poured champagne into everyone’s flutes, and then stood up and raised his glass, “All right, all right, let’s begin the festivities with a little toast – I think that’s traditional.” Sam cleared his throat, and everybody around the table turned their attention to him. “Steve and Bucky, you two are both totally insane, and I can’t believe you actually got married without telling any of us you were dating.” Sam gave them a meaningful look, but Clint and Riley were laughing. “Still, I gotta say, I’m happy for you guys. I’m going to be honest with you here, Bucky, when I became friends with Steve I was so jealous of you, this guy my buddy talked about all the time, like you’d hung the moon or something. Needless to say, I was kind of disappointed when I actually met you,” (Bucky scoffed and rolled his eyes) “but you’ve grown on me, man, and I know what a good team you and Steve make. So whatever nonsense you two numbskulls get up to now that you’re married, I just want to say that, from the bottom of my heart, I wish you both a lifetime of happiness, and a lifetime of health.” If any of Steve and Bucky’s friends noticed Sam’s emphasis on the word ‘health’ they made no outward sign of it. “To Bucky and Steve!” and everyone at the table clinked their glasses and took long sips of their champagne.

“My turn!” Clint said as he topped off his champagne and stood up. “I have literally been waiting for you two to get your heads out of your asses and get together for as long as I’ve known you. I swear to you there has been so much uncomfortable sexual tension in our friend group that we talked about convening a weekly organizational meeting to figure out how to get you both drunk enough that you would finally confess your feelings to each other.” Bucky, exasperated, groaned and buried his head in his hands, but Steve was bright red and staring wide-eyed at Clint. “I wasn’t necessarily expecting you two to just up and get married, but we all know that’s where you would have ended up anyway, so why wait, am I right? Anyway, congratulations on finally getting your shit together, like Sam said, health and happiness etc., and, to quote the wise words of a very wise man, here’s to all of your pain being champagne.” Clint raised his glass, “To Steve and Bucky, and to champagne!” It took Bucky a moment to compose himself, and Natasha was rolling her eyes fondly, but everyone managed to raise their glasses for Clint’s toast as well. 

When it didn’t seem like more toasts were forthcoming, Bucky stood and put his hand on Steve’s shoulder. “I really want to thank you guys for celebrating with us tonight. I know this is all pretty, um, unexpected, but, for a lot of reasons, it’s the right thing for both of us, and we couldn’t be happier to be married, and to be here with the four of you.”

“Now kiss!” Clint demanded, and Riley nodded vigorously and said, “Hear, hear!” Bucky dropped back into his seat and Steve looked at him and whispered in his ear, “Guess we’re going to have to get used to this,” and then leaned over to kiss him softly. 

Riley made a tutting sound and said, “Come on, you guys are newlyweds, let’s see some passion!” 

Bucky rolled his eyes but said to Steve, “I suppose we should give the people what they want, right sweetheart?” 

Steve raised one eyebrow in amusement at the endearment before remembering himself and shrugging. “Suppose so, babe.” Before Bucky could comment, Steve leaned over again, this time putting his hand on Bucky’s thigh to keep his balance. Bucky stopped himself from letting out a moan at the feeling of Steve’s hand on his thigh, but only barely. Even as he was congratulating himself on his composure, Steve closed the gap between them, his lips meeting Bucky’s gently at first, and then parting slightly. Bucky did let out a soft moan now, the feeling of Steve pressed against him, his lips against Bucky’s, and now Steve’s tongue running gently over Bucky’s lip, all overwhelming him. When Bucky’s lips parted, Steve slid his tongue along the tip of Bucky’s, and Bucky was about to deepen the kiss further when he remembered where they were, and instead gently broke it off. Steve opened his eyes and blinked several times, his pupils blown black, and looking a bit dazed. Bucky looked around the table to find Riley and Clint giving them thumbs up, and Natasha and Sam looking between him and Steve with their eyebrows raised. 

Bucky cleared his throat and said, “Well, are we all, uh, ready to order?”

***

The rest of dinner was somewhat less mortifying, especially after they finished the champagne and moved onto cocktails, and finally shots of an unpronounceable Russian vodka that Natasha insisted on, in spite of the fact that it didn’t seem to be on the menu. Before anyone could get too drunk, they settled their bill and all crowded into an Uber back to Steve and Bucky’s apartment, where most of their other friends in the city were meeting them for more drinks and dancing (“and cake!” Clint kept reminding them). When they arrived, Steve’s friend Darcy from Pratt, and a few of the lawyers Bucky was close with from the firm were already waiting outside. While Bucky walked over to say hello to Dum Dum and Gabe, Darcy squealed and ran up to hug Steve as he got out of the car. 

“I can’t believe you’re married, Steve! I feel like you’re all grown up!”

Steve shrugged sheepishly. “Yeah, it’s kind of weird, I guess, but, you know, it’s still me.”

“Of course it’s still you! You’re just you-with-a-lifetime-commitment-to-another-person.”

“Well, when you put it like that…”

“Oh shit, I totally forgot!”

“What did you forget?”

“Hold on,” Darcy said, and then took a few steps back and reached into her purse. Before Steve could ask her what she was doing, Darcy was throwing rice at Steve.

“Jesus, Darcy, what are you doing?”

“I’m throwing rice at you, duh, it’s traditional!” she said, as she continued showering Steve in rice.

“God, stop that,” he said, trying to cover his face from the onslaught, “It’s bad for the birds.”

“Nuh-uh, I looked it up, Snopes says that’s false, I can keep pelting you with rice until I run out, I win, the birds win – everybody wins!”

Bucky finally noticed Steve’s predicament and excused himself from his conversation. “Darcy, what on earth are you doing to my husband?”

“I’m participating in an ancient wedding tradition,” she said, and started throwing rice at Bucky, too. Darcy was reaching into her purse for another handful when Jim Morita got out of a cab and walked over to them. Darcy’s hand stilled in her purse immediately. “Who’s that?”

Jim clapped a hand on Bucky’s back. “Congratulations, man! Can’t believe you tied the know. And congrats Steve, you couldn’t have picked a better guy.” Jim grinned and shook Steve’s hand. “And who is this lovely young woman?”

“Ah, hi, I’m Darcy,” Darcy said, looking demurer now that she wasn’t hurling rice at Steve and Bucky. 

“Darcy, Jim Morita, it’s nice to meet you. What do you say I get you a drink when we get inside?”

Taking that as their cue, Steve and Bucky unlocked the door to their apartment building, and led the small crowd that had gathered up the stairs to their apartment. Inside, their furniture had been moved to the edges of the living room, drinks were set up on their kitchen counter, and fairy lights were strung up all throughout the apartment. Bucky looked at Steve, “And who might be responsible for all of this?” Steve was about to respond when their neighbor Sharon emerged from Bucky’s bedroom. 

“Hi boys,” she said, “Bucky, when I heard about what you guys were doing I asked Steve if I could do some decorating.”

“Insisted would be a little more accurate,” Steve said.

“Well, asked, insisted, either way, Steve let me borrow a key.”

“What were you doing in my, er, our bedroom?” Bucky asked.

Sharon looked into the room and made a point of closing the door. “Oh, you can see when the guests have left and you’re ready for some private time.”

“Sharon…” Bucky started.

“Bucky, you’re no fun. Honestly, I just added some… special touches, you don’t have to be such a spoil-sport.”

Bucky turned to Steve, “Honey, in the future, could you kindly refrain from letting our neighbors into our home to do God-knows-what to our bedroom?”

Steve shrugged, “I’ll note that for future weddings.”

Sharon laughed. “Trust me, you two will thank me later,” she said, and walked into the living room to say hello to the rest of the party.

In spite of Bucky’s trepidation about Sharon’s bedroom decorations, he left the door closed and let Steve lead him back toward the party. In the living room, a gorgeous Sylvia Weinstock cake that Tony had insisted on sending in his stead was displayed on a small table by the window (“If I’m going to have to miss the wedding, I sure as hell won’t let my favorite associate get married with a grocery store cake!”). Darcy was teaching Bucky’s coworkers a drinking game well away from the cake, and getting awfully cozy with Jim, Bucky noticed. One of Bucky and Steve’s best friends from undergrad, Peggy, was chatting with Clint and Riley, her arm around her girlfriend Angie. Natasha was pouring drinks in the kitchen and talking to Sam, who was connecting Steve’s laptop to speakers. Sam was laughing at something Natasha had said when he looked up and saw that Steve and Bucky had come back. Sam let out a loud whistle to get everyone’s attention, and said to the room, “Our newlyweds are back, let’s all give a big round of applause to Mr. and Mr. Barnes-Rogers!”

Steve leaned into Bucky while their friends cheered for them, and said, “I didn’t realize we were changing our names. Might have insisted on a different order for the hyphenation.”

“Oh really?” Bucky said, “I like Barnes-Rogers, it’s alphabetical. Yeah, I think Barnes-Rogers feels right, really rolls off the tongue. Might have to head back to City Hall to do the name change.”

“All right, love birds, you can whisper your sweet nothings later, the people want to see a first dance!” Sam said, and their friends cheered again. Bucky grinned at Steve, took his hand and walked into the middle of the room.

“You know,” Bucky said, “I still don’t know what song you picked, and if it does ends up being ‘Mississippi Goddamn’ I swear to God Steve –” but Bucky was cut off by the opening strains of ‘That’s How Strong My Love Is.’ “Oh, good choice,” he said, and pulled Steve into him.

“Thought you’d like it,” Steve said. “Can never go wrong with Otis Redding, and ‘I’ve Been Loving You Too Long’ seemed kind of inappropriate, you know, under the circumstances.” Steve felt more than heard Bucky laughing against him, and happiness bubbled up in him. Steve smiled and moved in closer to Bucky, relishing the feeling of his best friend solid against him, Bucky’s arms wrapped securely around him. A persistent voice in the back of Steve’s mind reminded him none of this was real and it would all be over as soon as Steve found a job, but he managed to silence it for the two and a half minutes of their first dance. 

***

Hours later, after cake and dancing and too many tequila shots, the party wrapped up and Steve and Bucky’s friends left with repeated congratulations and gentle and not-so-gentle ribbing about their wedding night. Bucky and Steve agreed to clean up in the morning, and Steve was about to head to his bedroom when he noticed that Darcy and Jim were asleep, curled up together on the couch. 

“Uh, Buck?”

“Oh, guess we’ve got guests for the evening.”

“Yeah, um, maybe I should sleep with you tonight? I mean, they’re going to have some questions if I walk out of the ‘guest’ bedroom tomorrow morning.”

“Right, yeah, that makes sense. Plus you can help me clean up whatever romantic décor Sharon left for us.”

Steve chuckled and followed Bucky into his bedroom. Bucky groaned as soon as he opened the door – the bed was covered in rose petals, there were more fairy lights strung up around the windows, and in the middle of the bed there was a pile of condoms and a bottle of Astroglide. Steve barked out a laugh. “God, she’s not exactly subtle, is she?”

Bucky just shook his head, exasperated. “No she certainly is not. Well, wanna help me get this stuff off the bed so we can actually go to sleep?”

Steve and Bucky cleared the rose petals off the bed, and Bucky quietly tucked the lube and condoms into the drawer of his bedside table while Steve brushed his teeth and changed out of his suit. Bucky finished brushing his teeth and hanging up his suit to find Steve already in bed. Bucky got under the covers and had just shut the light off when Steve said, “Hey Buck?”

“Yeah, Stevie?”

“Thanks, for today.”

“I’ve already told you buddy, you don’t have to thank me.”

“No, I mean, obviously I’m thankful for, well, everything, but I mean thank you for being there for me today, specifically.” Bucky turned the bedside lamp back on and turned to look at Steve, who smiled sheepishly at him, and then turned his face to look up at the ceiling. “It was a good day in a lot of ways, but it was also kind of weird and upsetting? I don’t know how to explain it, I’m just – what I’m trying to say is that I’m glad it was you, I’m glad you were in my corner today. I’m grateful for you, for our friendship, every day, but I was really grateful today. Just can’t imagine doing this with anybody else.”

Bucky reached out and squeezed Steve’s shoulder. “I know what you mean, it was a weird day for me too. But you’re right, it helps to have somebody you trust in your corner. And you’re that for me too, you know?”

“Yeah, Buck.” 

Bucky shut the light back off and lay down. “Well, I guess that’s day one of marriage down.”

Steve chuckled. “Yeah, guess so. ‘Night, husband.”

“Good night, Stevie.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a little bit filler-y and I'm feeling out of practice, but I hope you enjoy! Your comments and kudos are beacons of light for me in these dark times.

Steve woke disoriented and panicked for a moment – where was he? why wasn’t he in his bed? what was tangled up with him? – before he remembered that he had gone to sleep with Bucky. They had fallen asleep at opposite sides of the bed, Steve being careful not to touch Bucky too much. Now though, Bucky’s legs were draped over his, Bucky’s arm was wrapped around his waist, and somehow, Steve’s insulin pump was underneath Bucky, its tubing twisted across his body. To make matters worse, Steve’s morning wood was trapped against Bucky, and he was sure Bucky would become aware of it the moment he tried to move. Steve closed his eyes, willing himself to fall back asleep, when Bucky shifted, pulling Steve in against him, Steve’s head tucked under Bucky’s chin. Steve heard Bucky murmuring, “Closer, babe,” and then sighing contentedly. Steve huffed a breath, wishing Bucky wasn’t holding him and wishing Bucky actually wanted to be holding him in equal parts. 

He was convincing himself that he should pretend it was all real when he felt Bucky stiffen and then his arms slacken around Steve. Steve did his best to feign sleep as Bucky untangled himself from Steve and the insulin pump, but he could feel Bucky looking at him from beside the bed and didn’t miss the quiet “Shit,” he muttered under his breath. Steve heard the door open and close, and then footsteps going out into the hall, and finally opened his eyes and stretched out on the bed. When the smell of coffee and bacon wafted in from the kitchen, he tested his blood sugar (127, not bad after a night of cake and drinking, he thought), and walked out into the apartment, greeted at the end of the hallway by the sight of Bucky standing over the stove, frying bacon and flipping pancakes.

“If I had known you were going to make me breakfast every morning I would have proposed to you years ago,” Steve said.

Bucky startled, but grinned when he saw Steve seated at one of the kitchen stools. “Where’d you get the idea that any of this was for you?”

“What, you’re gonna eat eight pancakes and half a pound of bacon all by yourself?”

“Hey, maybe I will.”

“Sure, Buck.”

Bucky grinned at him again, “I guess you can have some, but don’t get used to it, pal.”

The coffee maker beeped and Steve poured himself and Bucky cups, stirring in Bucky’s requisite two cubes of sugar and handing him his mug. “Did Jim and Darcy leave?”

“Guess so, haven’t seen them around this morning.”

Steve took a sip of his coffee. “So, about Jim and Darcy, and everybody who… doesn’t know – I think we need to talk.”

“Aw, you divorcing me already?”

“No way, Bucky, you’re not getting rid of me that easily,” Steve said, grinning at Bucky. “But, uh, this whole thing where we have to convince them we’re really… together… I guess I just hadn’t thought through, um, exactly how that was going to go.”

Bucky turned off the burner and turned around to look at Steve. “You’re going to have to be a little more specific there, Stevie.”

“I just didn’t know what it would be like, to, you know, to kiss you, and everything.”

“Are you telling me I’m a bad kisser, Steve?”

“No, it just feels a little awkward, I guess? Not because you’re bad at it, obviously, but we’ve been friends for so long, you know, it feels a little, er, surprising, I guess, when uh, when it happens.”

“So, what, no more kissing? That’s fine, I mean, it might seem a little strange to some people but –”

“No, no, no, that’s not what I’m saying. What I mean is that I feel a little awkward about the whole situation, and I thought we could talk about the particulars, like you give me a sign or something if you’re going to kiss me or anything like that.”

“Don’t you think people’ll be able to tell?”

Steve rubbed his forehead and let out a frustrated sigh. “I don’t know, Buck, I suppose you're right. I guess I’ll just get used to it.”

Bucky looked at Steve consideringly. “How about this. Let me take you on some dates – we’ll do some real romantic stuff, treat each other like a couple, so when it’s time to do all that in front of other people we’ll both feel more comfortable with it.”

“So, we’ll practice being married?”

“Yeah, exactly.”

Steve thought about it for a moment. “You know, that’s not a bad idea.”

“Well, it’s my idea, of course it’s not bad.” Steve shook his head but smiled at Bucky fondly. “Should we start now?” Bucky continued, “No time like the present!”

“Oh, yeah, I can’t today, I lost a bunch of time last week and I’ve got to finish up that painting I’ve been working on to show my adviser on Friday.”

Bucky deflated a little, but then said, “Well, what time are you getting back? We could always go out tonight. Dinner or something.”

“Yeah, that sounds great, I should be back by around five.”

“Perfect, let’s meet up at the apartment when you’re done, I’ll have something good planned for you.”

“Sounds good, Bucky. Thanks. I’ll start planning what I'm going to do for you, can't let you have all the fun.”

***

Steve and Bucky ate breakfast together, their conversation thankfully having relieved most of the lingering awkwardness instead of creating more, at least as far as Steve could tell. He showered and got dressed in his painting clothes, not even attempting to style his hair into an approximation of what Sam’s hairdresser had done for him yesterday. He took his phone charger and made sure that the new episode Sam’s podcast had downloaded so he didn’t have to use data on his walk to the studio. He had grabbed his messenger bag and had just opened the door to leave when Bucky shouted for him.

“Hey, Steve! I think you may be forgetting something.”

“What’s that?” Steve said, walking back into the apartment. Bucky emerged from his bedroom, holding up Steve’s wedding band.

“Wouldn’t want you to leave the house without this on your first full day as a married man,” Bucky said with a grin.

Steve chuckled sheepishly. “No, couldn’t have that.” He took the ring from Bucky and put it on. “I’ll see you tonight, yeah?”

“You bet your ass you will, you’re gonna have the best date of your life, mark my words.”

Steve laughed again. “Sure thing, Buck.” He wondered briefly if he should kiss Bucky goodbye, get a head start on their treating-each-other-like-a-real-couple thing, but after a short hesitation, Steve simply said, “All right, see you in a few hours,” and abruptly walked out of the apartment, closing the door behind him.

On the walk over to his studio, Steve rotated the ring around his finger distractedly while he started listening to Sam’s podcast. When Sam’s politics blog had surged in popularity during the presidential campaign, Natasha had suggested they start recording a podcast about the election with some of the insider info Sam had picked up working in communications for Senate campaigns over the past few years. Natasha, who had started working for Sam covering mostly New York politics, co-hosted, and Clint, a former speechwriter for Senator Fury, was a fan favorite and a frequent guest. As their friend, Steve acknowledged he was biased, but he also firmly believed that ‘One Nation Under Pod’ would have been a weekly staple for him even if he had never met the hosts. 

“Welcome to another episode of One Nation Under Pod, where the lines are made up and the points don’t matter! I’m Sam Wilson, joined as always by the lovely Natasha Romanoff and the, let’s go with ‘endearing,’ Clint Barton.”

“Think you left out ‘ruggedly handsome’ there, Sammy,” Clint said, amusement clear in his voice. 

“Truly a face made for podcasting,” Sam said. “We’ve got a lot to cover today, after Trump’s address to Congress on Tuesday and calls coming from left and right for Attorney General Schmidt to recuse himself from investigating White House connections to Russia. We’re also going to be joined a little later on by Clint’s and my former boss, Maria Hill, chief of staff for Senator Fury – we’ll be talking about Fury’s 2018 reelection campaign, and what Senate Democrats should be doing right now to keep Trump in check and to take back ground we’ve lost over the past few years. Before that, though, I actually wanted to start with one of the more bizarre stories we’ve seen recently, which I’ve taken to calling, ‘National Treasure 3: Quest for the GOP Energy Bill.’ Natasha, can you catch up our listeners who have day jobs and don’t spend all their time on Twitter?”

“Yeah, this is a strange one, even in comparison to everything else going on right now. So Brock Rumlow –”

“Terrifying garbage monster Brock Rumlow,” Clint interjected.

“Thank you Clint – terrifying garbage monster Brock Rumlow has reportedly drafted a bill that would dramatically restructure the Department of Energy, something the Republicans have been itching to do for years. The problem is, no one on the House Energy and Commerce Committee has been able to read the bill, because they literally can’t find it.”

“And when you say they can’t find it…” Sam started.

“When I say they can’t find it, I mean a staffer told members of the committee that the bill was physically located in a specific room of the House, but when congresspeople have gone to that room, the bill has not been there. No one knows where the bill is.”

“These guys are so wild,” Clint said, “They are either totally incompetent or totally evil, and Rumlow is just the absolute worst of the bunch. He portrays himself as this morally upright, straight-laced, libertarian-next-door, but Rumlow doesn’t care about people’s rights, all he’s interested in is tax cuts for billionaires, and destroying valuable government institutions, and if that means he has to get in bed with an avowed racist, that’s no problem for him! You wanna deport the victim of domestic abuse when her immigration status is reported to authorities by her abuser? No problem! You wanna commit treason? No problem! You wanna start a nuclear war with Iran? No problem! As long as Rumlow’s buddies get those tax cuts, as long as we stop publishing climate change data, he’s cool with whatever. What a creep, what a disgusting excuse of a human being.”

“Ok, ok, calm down there, Clint,” Sam said. “Rumlow’s got one thing on his buddy, Jasper Sitwell – Rumlow’s actually going to hold a town hall back in Indiana next week, Sitwell’s still hiding from his constituents.”

“Oh my GOD, don’t get me started!” Clint said. “Little Jasper, what a spineless goon, he can’t even face his voters to defend the platform he ran for PRESIDENT on! I cannot BELIEVE these people, I would call them real-life comic book villains but they’re too cowardly, just unbelievable, unbelievable.” 

As Clint finished his rant, Steve could hear Sam and Natasha trying to hold back their laughter, and he smiled to himself, so happy these people were his friends. They talked about Schmidt’s potential recusal and Trump’s joint address, but before their interview with Maria Hill, Steve made it to his studio and switched over to music, wanting to save Hill’s thoughts on the mid-term elections for later when he could give them his full attention. 

Steve took a few minutes to look at the painting he was working on, a scene from a photograph he had found recently of him and his mother, sitting on the steps of the building they’d lived in when he was a kid. Steve wasn’t sure who had taken the photograph – his father had been killed in the Gulf War when Steve was a year and a half old, and he must have been at least five or six here – but they had captured something Steve found striking. He and his mother were clearly not talking or interacting in the photo, but there was still a powerful togetherness about it, about how they were sitting beside each other, looking out over their street, over Brooklyn. Steve’s mother looked so much younger, but still older than she should have looked, tired in the way raising a child on your own makes a person tired. 

This was to be one of the paintings in the series about family he was preparing for his final project at Pratt. It could be an emotionally challenging subject, but Steve was pleased with the way this painting was coming together, and the sketches he was preparing for future paintings were shaping up well. Even though he loved making art, Steve often thought of it as work, but he was relieved to be getting back to it after having taken time off to plan his and Bucky’s wedding. After reviewing what he had been working on, Steve began painting, and he got into a good rhythm almost immediately. He took breaks throughout the day to eat and catch up with the news, but he was still surprised when his phone buzzed with a text from Bucky at 5 o’clock. 

Bucky: Hey, you on your way back?

Steve: Shit, totally lost track of time, heading back now

Bucky: Don’t want to mess up your work, if you want to keep at it I’m not in a rush

Steve: No it’s fine, I’m at a good stopping place, be home in 20

Steve turned back to his painting for a moment, struck by how much of his mother’s personality he could see in it.

“Gotta go for now, ma, my husband’s taking me on a date.” He laughed a little at himself and shook his head, then packed up his things and headed back to the apartment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you listen to Pod Save America it's probably obvious how important Jon Lovett is to me and I will not apologize for that. If you don't listen to Pod Save America you need to reevaluate your life. I'm also borrowing liberally from the news -- you may recognize National Treasure 3 as what's going on now with the GOP health care bill, Schmidt as Jeff Sessions, and, of course, little Jasper as Marco Rubio. There may be more silly podcasting and there will certainly be more politics to come. But first, a date!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise I haven't forgotten about this fic! I've been super busy and just haven't had time to sit down with it. I'll be working all weekend but hopefully I can get you another chapter or two next week. Thanks again for reading, commenting, bookmarking and leaving kudos -- it's truly the best motivation!

Spring had descended on Brooklyn in pale greens and pinks, and the sky was lighter than Steve expected it to be as he left the studio, but he barely noticed how pleasant the evening was, too wrapped up in his thoughts about what Bucky had planned for them. Steve had already begun thinking about where he would take Bucky – the theater company Steve had worked at one summer during college was doing a production of ‘The Importance of Being Earnest,’ and he was sure he could get a good deal from his former boss. He was weighing the pros and cons of various restaurants near the theater when he made it back to the apartment. 

The first thing Steve noticed when he opened the apartment door was the artificial lemon scent of cleaning product, somewhat counterbalanced by the smell of fresh air from the open window in the living room. Steve set down his bag and walked deeper into the apartment. The area rug and runner in the hallway had been vacuumed, and the coffee table was practically glistening, all of the remaining detritus from their party gone, and the books that usually littered the floor and windowsill stacked in neat piles. The smell of cleaning product was stronger in the kitchen, which was spotless, cleaner than he had ever seen it before.

“Hey Bucky?” Steve called out from the kitchen.

Bucky came out from his bedroom, looking unfairly handsome in a dark gray t-shirt and fitted blue jeans. “Oh, hey Steve. I, uh, cleaned,” he said, running a hand through his hair sheepishly.

Steve laughed. “Yeah, I can see that. I’ve gotta say, I’m impressed, I don’t think it’s ever been so clean in here, although I hope you don’t expect me to maintain this,” he said, gesturing at the counter, which was literally sparkling under the kitchen lights.

“Ha, yeah, no, I don’t think I could keep it this clean either, I guess I… went a little overboard here.”

Steve paused and observed Bucky, who had furrowed his brow and was looking around the apartment, seemingly noticing for the first time exactly how clean it was.

“Everything ok, then?” Steve asked. “Just… felt like cleaning?”

“You could say that, after you left I felt kind of fidgety, wasn’t sure what to do with myself.” Bucky looked like he was about to continue, but shook his head to clear it and changed the subject. “So, good day at the studio? Ready for a romantic night out?” His earlier hesitancy seemed to be gone, replaced with an exaggeratedly suggestive grin.

Steve laughed again. “Yeah, good day, got a lot done. Give me a few minutes to change – do I need to wear anything special?”

“No, just jeans, whatever’s comfortable. Nothing with paint on it though, Rogers.”

Steve gave Bucky a salute and headed off toward his bedroom to change, “You got it, Buck.”

He emerged a few minutes later in clean jeans and a sweater, in deference to the still-cool weather. Bucky shrugged on a jacket and held out his hand for Steve. “Ready to go?”

Steve grinned in spite of himself and took Bucky’s hand. “Lead the way.”

***

By the time Bucky had navigated them to the Q, Steve had a good guess as to their destination, but it wasn’t until they were getting off the train that he leaned into Bucky’s shoulder and said, “So Coney Island, huh?”

“Had to go with a classic for our first date,” Bucky said with a smirk, wrapping an arm around Steve’s shoulder. “Thought we could get hot dogs, ride the Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel, maybe you’d let me win you one of those big, stupid teddy bears.”

“Good choice, but I think we should wait until after the Cyclone for hot dogs, don’t want to have a repeat of that one night the summer before junior year…”

Bucky let out a surprised laugh. “God, I’d forgotten about that! You were so sick! And the look on Becca’s face, she was so grossed out.”

“Can’t blame her for that, it was not a great experience for anybody,” Steve said with a shudder. 

“You wanna skip the roller coaster, then?”

“Nah, it’s ok, besides, I haven’t eaten in a few hours, we should be safe.”

“All right, but these are new shoes, so if anything changes just… watch your aim.”

Steve rolled his eyes, shrugging Bucky’s arm off his shoulder and grabbing his hand, leading him toward the Cyclone. “All right, all right, let’s go get in line, we haven’t got all night, and I’m not leaving this place without a giant stuffed bear.” Bucky chuckled but let himself be led toward the roller coaster.

Coney Island was never quiet, but it was a cool evening, and the crowds mostly seemed to have stuck to indoor activities. As a result, Bucky and Steve had no trouble making their way through the park from the Cyclone, to the Brooklyn Flyer, to Nathan’s hot dog stand, to the arcade. (Bucky tried to win Steve a teddy bear in a shooting game at the arcade, but his aim was terrible and Steve, laughing at him the whole time, wouldn’t let him keep trying after his third spectacular failure.) As they made their way out of the arcade, Bucky noticed Steve yawning, and realized that, although they had had a fun night, had joked and laughed and even maybe flirted a little, it had really been no different from any of the other nights they’d come to Coney Island together. When he saw they were walking toward the Wonder Wheel, he knew it was his last chance to salvage their evening’s romantic potential.

“Hey Stevie, what do you say we go on one more ride before we go back?” Bucky said, and pointed at the huge Ferris wheel. 

Steve grinned. “Sure thing, I don’t think I’ve been on this one since I was a kid.”

They got in line behind a large group of teenagers, some of whom were paired up and making out with each other, but mostly who were jostling each other and joking around. The noise around them somehow made the space surrounding Steve and Bucky feel private and intimate, and they both went quiet for the first time that night, the air around them suddenly charged. Bucky gave Steve a crooked smile and said lowly, “What do you say, you ready to start practicing, Stevie?” Steve felt himself flush, but he nodded, and Bucky wrapped an arm around him again, pulling Steve in until their sides were flush against each other. Steve put his arm around Bucky’s waist, and let his head rest on Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky rubbed little circles along the base of Steve’s neck with his thumb, making Steve sigh.

“This isn’t so bad, huh?” Bucky said softly.

Steve smiled. “No, not bad. It’s kind of nice, actually.”

“We can do this in front of my ma, no problem,” Bucky said, but Steve could tell from his tone he had some reservations.

Steve chuckled and looked up at Bucky. “Buck, she’s known me since we were kids, I think it’d be awkward to debut a new relationship in front of her even if it was real. Hell, it might even be more awkward that way.”

Steve felt Bucky’s shoulders relax a little. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. And we’ll have to put that off for a while anyway, I’ve got to save up some PTO before another trip to Indiana, gives us more time to get used to this.”

“Mhm,” Steve agreed, curling further into Bucky, “But I have to say, you’re not bad at this cuddling thing, think I may already be used to this.”

Bucky placed a soft kiss on the top of Steve’s head. “How about that?”

“Hm, that’s different, but I can be ok with that too.”

Bucky took Steve’s chin in his hand and turned his face until they were looking at each other. “How about this?” Bucky said, voice barely above a whisper, leaning in toward Steve. As they were about to kiss, they heard a man loudly clearing his throat. They both looked up, startled, to see that they were at the front of the line, and their carriage gate was open, ready for them.

Steve shrugged and smiled sheepishly at Bucky, and walked ahead of him to the open carriage. Bucky followed him in, closed the gate, and put his arm around Steve. “You wanna, uh, pick up where we left off there?”

Steve giggled despite himself. “In a minute, let’s wait till we get to the top. I want to enjoy this romantic view with my husband first,” Steve said, drawing a laugh from Bucky.

“All right, all right, we can do that,” he said and sat back, smiling, enjoying the feeling of his arm around Steve, content for the moment to enjoy the bright lights of the park against the moonlit night sky. Steve was right – it was romantic, even if it was also a bit of a cliché. He hadn’t brought a date to Coney Island in years, not since he was a teenager, and it felt right to be here again with Steve, sharing a moment that felt all the more meaningful because of the memories they had here together. He was so wrapped up in his thoughts he barely noticed they had reached the top of the Ferris wheel, until he felt Steve nudging him.

“So, uh, hey. Thought now might be a good time to, you know…”

Bucky grinned at Steve. “Yeah, I think I do,” he said, and leaned in again, but before they could kiss the Ferris wheel started turning, and their carriage rocked precariously.

Steve pulled back, startled. “What the fuck is going on?”

Bucky groaned, all of a sudden remembering why he hadn’t taken other dates on the Wonder Wheel. “Shit, I totally forgot.”

“What did you forget Buck? Please tell me it’s not about turn of the century construction standards, I really don’t want to die tonight.”

Bucky sighed and pointed up to the track their carriage was on. “No, Stevie, some of the cars are on these tracks and they swing back and forth when the wheel spins, remember? We must have gotten in the wrong line. It’s just gonna be… a little bumpier than I was anticipating.”

Steve shook his head and snorted as the carriage lurched forward again. “Guess the universe really doesn’t want us to kiss, huh?”

“Yeah, guess not.” The carriage suddenly slid all the way forward on the track and rocked back and forth, before settling into a gentler sway. Bucky looked back from the track to Steve, who was gripping the metal bar in front of them tightly and looked a little green. “Hey, you ok there, Stevie?”

“Yeah, I should be fine, just wasn’t expecting the rocking, and the view is a little disorienting.”

“Here,” Bucky said, putting his arm out again and motioning for Steve to lean back against him. “Close your eyes, I’ll tell you when we’re about to slide again so you can be ready for it.”

Steve gratefully sagged back against Bucky and shut his eyes. “I feel stupid, the roller coaster was no problem, I just got myself worked up, I guess.”

“Don’t worry about it, we’ll be back on the ground soon.” 

They were quiet for the rest of the ride down, save when Bucky gave Steve little warnings about a slide their carriage was about to make. By the time they climbed off the Wonder Wheel, they were both ready to head back to their apartment, feeling suddenly exhausted from the unexpected stress of the ride, and emotionally drained from trying to navigate the new dimensions of their relationships. 

On their walk back to the subway, Steve took Bucky’s hand and smiled at him. “Sorry this wasn’t quite as romantic as you hoped, Buck.”

“Not your fault. I’ll try to, uh, avoid turbulence better on the next one.” 

Steve laughed. “Hey, not your fault either. Thanks for doing all this, though – I really did have a good time.” Steve squeezed Bucky’s hand and stopped walking. 

“What’s up, Steve?”

Steve looked at Bucky nervously. “I just thought we could give this one more shot.”

“What’s ‘this’?” Bucky was about to ask, but before he could, Steve wrapped his arms around Bucky’s neck and pulled him down into a kiss. Bucky was too startled to return the kiss right away, but after a moment he grinned into it and nipped at Steve’s bottom lip. Steve barely stifled a groan, and responded by licking into Bucky’s mouth. Bucky’s cock twitched as he parted his lips and let Steve run his tongue along Bucky’s, and he tried to shift away from Steve, willing himself not to get hard and let Steve feel. How was he supposed to help it when Steve was such a good kisser?

Steve broke off the kiss before Bucky could embarrass himself, his pupils dilated and smiling at Bucky openly. “Hope that was worth the wait.”

Bucky stared at Steve for a few seconds, then shook his head as if trying to clear it. “Uh, yeah, yeah, that was… anyone ever tell you you’re a pretty good kisser?”

Steve laughed. “Yeah, once or twice.” He took Bucky’s hand again and started leading him back toward the subway. “Come on, we better get home, it’s starting to get late.”

Bucky let himself be led, periodically looking down at where their hands were joined with a kind of wonder. If he hadn’t fully realized it before, he did now: he was in trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How does kissing work? Beats me, honestly. Hopefully this wasn't too terrible but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Also, if you wanna hang out on Tumblr, you can find me @no-fun-zone!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, wow, I am sorry it's taken me so long to update, have I mentioned I have three jobs and am getting a PhD? I'm a little busy. Anyway, millions and millions of apologies. 
> 
> Second, I'm in the very strange position of the premise of this fic no longer being relevant. That's awesome for me as a person who needs to continue consuming medical care, but a little confusing for me as a person trying to finish writing a story about the repeal of the ACA. I'm going to keep writing it, though, and just happily acknowledge that the world we're actually living in is marginally better than the world I'm writing about.

Steve didn’t have to be on campus on Monday, so he slept in and spent his morning drinking coffee and scrolling through Twitter. He was reading a New York Times story about the Energy Department when he heard the key turning in the lock.

“Bucky, that you?”

“Hey Stevie, yeah, I’m uh, I’m back.” Bucky shut the door and walked into the living room where Steve was spread out on the couch.

“You get fired already? Awfully inconvenient for me,” Steve said, looking up at Bucky from his computer.

“Ha, uh, no, not fired, but Stark did send me home. He told me I shouldn’t be at work, said I should be on my honeymoon and wouldn’t let me take ‘no’ for an answer. I’m not allowed to go back for another week.”

“So what, we’re going on a honeymoon? He just gave you some extra vacation time?” 

Bucky sighed and shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so. Stark does stuff like this sometimes, you know how he is.”

“Sure thing, there’s just one problem – I’m supposed to be meeting with my advisor on Wednesday, we’ve had it on the books for weeks and she’s hard to get a hold of. Unless Stark took care of that, too.” Steve said, looking unimpressed.

Bucky raised his eyebrows, but didn’t respond.

“Wait,” Steve said, sitting forward, “Are you… no, you can’t be serious. Tony Stark rescheduled my advisor meeting? Without telling me? How’d he pull that off? I can’t even reschedule my advisor meetings!”

Bucky sighed again, “I don’t know, Stevie, the man’s got a lot of connections. And when he gets his mind set on something, he can’t be dissuaded.”

Steve sat back into the couch. “Well, I guess we’re going on a honeymoon. Did Stark pick the destination too? Are we headed somewhere exotic?”

“Guess it depends on your definition of ‘exotic.’”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“We’re going to Indiana.”

***

Bucky grew up in Brooklyn, but his mother had moved back to Indiana when her husband died, and now Bucky was the only Barnes family member still living in New York. He went home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but it was nothing like having them in the city, stopping at their apartment once or twice a week for dinner, or to be able to help Freddie Barnes do the home repairs Bucky’s father had done when he was alive. Steve missed having the Barneses around too – they were the closest thing he had to family, and sometimes Bucky thought the distance was harder on Steve than it was on him. 

Even so, the look Steve gave Bucky when he got the news made it clear Indiana was not the honeymoon destination Steve had had in mind. After a few moments of staring at Bucky disbelievingly, though, Steve had sighed and gotten up to pack some things for the week. 

“So was Indiana Stark’s idea or yours?” Steve called out from his room.

Bucky walked down the hallway into Steve’s room and watched him throw things into a duffel bag from the doorway. “I told him that we hadn’t invited any family to our wedding, and he demanded we go. I actually won’t mind seeing my ma and Becca, but I am sorry you’re getting dragged away from school for a vacation eight hundred miles from the closest beach. Tony did say he’s got something more romantic in store for us, which… actually, that makes me really nervous, now that I think about it.”

Steve chuckled. “I’m sure it’ll make a great story, whatever it is.”

“Yeah, that’s one thing you can count on Tony Stark for.”

“So, you nervous at all? To see Freddie and everything? You really think she’s going to buy it? I mean, I know we talked about it, but we’re actually going to see her. Tonight.”

“You know, I’m not really. We had that, um, practice, yesterday, and I feel like our friends haven’t been able to tell.”

“Yeah, but she’s your ma, Buck. She’s always been able to tell when you were lying. Christ, or when I was lying.”

“I suppose… I just think she’s wanted for me – for both of us, really – to find somebody to settle down with. Maybe she’ll want it to be real, so it’ll seem real.”

Steve turned his attention abruptly away from Bucky and focused on rolling up the shirts he’d pulled out of his closet. “Yeah, guess that makes sense.”

When Steve didn’t turn back to look at him, Bucky hesitantly turned to pack his own suitcase. “Right, ok, well I’m gonna go get ready, will you be ready to head out in about twenty minutes? I can call us a Lyft.”

“Sure, twenty minutes, no problem.”  


***

After a Lyft ride and Steve’s standard pat-down at security (“Gotta love the pump,” Steve said while Bucky looked on apologetically), they made their way to the gate, where Bucky took out a book and Steve absent-mindedly sketched him. 

“So I know Shelbyville’s not exactly the world’s most exciting place, but is there anything you want to do while we’re in town?” Bucky asked.

“Nah, it’ll just be good to see your ma. Is Becca going to be home?”

“I texted her, she said she can come up from Bloomington after class on Thursday, so we should be able to spend a few days with her too.”

Steve stopped drawing and looked up at Bucky seriously. “Is Freddie going to make her Bolognese for us? With the fresh pasta and everything?”

Bucky rolled his eyes affectionately. “I think you can probably sweet-talk her into it if you put your mind to it, Stevie.”

Steve hummed appreciatively. “She does make a mean Bolognese.”

Bucky chuckled and opened his book again, and Steve refocused his attention on the sketch of Bucky. As he was considering a shadow on Bucky’s face, he let the voice of the CNN anchor on one of the airport televisions filter through.

“Speaker Rumlow expressed concern today about his plans for major cuts to the Department of Energy’s climate programs,” the anchor was saying, “citing the backlash some members of Congress face at home during the recess this week.” Steve looked up at the screen, which had cut to a clip of a press conference of Rumlow’s. 

In the clip, Brock Rumlow, looking as sanctimonious as ever, was standing at a podium wearing the expression of a disappointed parent about to lecture his child about their bad behavior. “We know the American people don’t want the big government spending on programs like the ones we’ve talked about cutting at Energy, and I hope to see a lot of support from our constituents on some of these initiatives while we’re back in our districts this week. I know there’s been a lot of noise from some quarters over some of these initiatives – there are a lot of big money interests out there trying to hold onto these climate programs, and I think that’s who we’ve been hearing from, and not so much our average Joe citizens. Whether or not folks come out this week in support of us, though, I know Americans are looking for government to trim some of the fat, the way we’ve done with health care, and we’re going to trim that fat. But I’m not an arm-breaker, I don’t believe in that style. I believe in persuading instead of intimidating. When we get back from this recess, I think we’re going to be very successful.” Rumlow cleared his throat and looked up from his prepared remarks. “I know we’re going to be very successful.”

Steve scoffed, not necessarily confident that the climate programs wouldn’t be scrapped, but recognizing in Rumlow’s tone his lack of confidence after he hadn’t been able to get a majority of congresspeople’s support in an initial vote. Sam, Natasha and Clint had joined a chorus of voices encouraging their listeners to call their representatives about the bills that had been put forward so far, and, to everyone’s astonishment, it seemed to be working. Several programs and regulations had been removed through executive orders, and the full repeal of the Affordable Care Act loomed on the horizon, but it was clear on many issues that people’s voices were being heard.

“Hey Buck?” Steve said.

“Yeah?”

“Isn’t Shelbyville in Rumlow’s district?”

“God, don’t remind me, my mom campaigned like hell against that asshole.”

“You know, I think there is something I want to do in Indiana.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Congressional recess is actually coming up, everybody! You should all go out and yell at your congresspeople, because Congress is terrible.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Should I have written a report for school instead of another chapter? Yes. Do I have regrets? I'm not going to lie to you, I have some regrets. Anyway, here's Chapter 10. Sorry it's short, the next one should be a little more plot-y. Bucky's being a stupid boy who doesn't understand his emotions in this chapter (possibly inspired by one or two real men I know), but he's going to figure them out (unlike said real men). Thanks so much for reading, hope you like this chapter! As always, comments and kudos are greatly appreciated!

Winifred Barnes was waiting for Steve and Bucky at Arrivals when they landed in Indianapolis. She hugged Steve and Bucky teary-eyed, before slapping Bucky on hard the shoulder.

“How dare you get married without telling me, James Buchanan Barnes. Your own mother! You should be ashamed of yourself.”

Bucky looked cowed and rubbed at his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Ma! Of course we wish you had been there. We just felt like we had to do it right away, you know? Before things… changed.”

Winifred softened immediately, running one hand through Bucky’s hair and placing her other hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Of course, honey, of course I know. A mother just wants to be at her first born baby’s wedding, you understand that. But I’m happy you two are happy – I’ve always known how you’ve felt about each other.” Steve and Bucky both blushed, turning away from each other and Freddie scoffed. “Oh, you can’t be bashful with each other anymore, you’re married now!”

Steve determinedly fixed his attention on a spot on the floor while Bucky laughed uncomfortably. “Ha, yeah, guess we’re just still getting used to that.” Bucky noticed Freddie looking between them skeptically, and threw his arm around Steve, pulling him in to kiss him on the cheek. Steve, still staring at the ground, blushed redder but smiled in spite of himself, but Freddie seemed appeased. “Any chance we can get out of here? The airport’s nice and all, but it’s been a long day and Steve hasn’t shut up about your cooking since we left this morning.”

Freddie grinned. “Oh, I see how it is, you come home just for my food.”

“Of course not, Freddie,” Steve said, finally schooling his features into a more composed expression. “We couldn’t end our first week of married life without coming to see the most important woman in our lives,” he finished seriously.

“Aren’t you still the charmer, Stevie. Ok, let’s head home. Steve gets shotgun, he’s the only one here who knows how to treat a lady.”

Steve smirked at Bucky and took Freddie’s arm, walking ahead of Bucky, who rolled his eyes and followed behind them. “My own mother and my own husband,” he muttered, “I knew this was going to happen.” 

***

As soon as Freddie pulled onto I-70, she turned to Steve and said, “So what’s the big idea, marrying my son without even telling me you two were together?”

Bucky saw the tips of Steve’s ears pinken, and was about to jump in, when Steve replied, “I know we moved fast, but, you know, we’ve been friends for so long, best friends, and when started dating a few months ago it just – it felt right. Then the election happened, and, well, we got worried. Who knows if we would have even been able to get married six months from now?” Steve paused and looked back at Bucky meaningfully, and then faced Freddie. “He’s the love of my life, Mrs. Barnes. I couldn’t let anything get in the way of that – I just, I couldn’t.”

Bucky sank backwards into the seat, flushed now himself. Steve had a flair for the dramatic, sure, but Bucky hadn’t realized he was quite that talented an actor. Bucky reached out and put his hand on Steve’s shoulder, and Steve turned to face him, a small smile on his face. When Bucky looked at his mother, her eyes were wet.

“Oh, boys,” she said tearfully, “I’m sorry you have to suffer the consequences of this horrible president, but I’m so happy you’ve figured things out. I always knew you would, always.”

Bucky cleared his throat awkwardly and took his hand off Steve’s shoulder, sliding back into his seat. Freddie kept saying that – that she knew how he and Steve felt about each other. It’s not like no one had ever mistaken them for a couple before this. They’d been inseparable since grade school, and when Steve came out in high school, and then Bucky a year later, people had assumed they were together. It had always seemed to embarrass Steve, but Bucky had laughed it off. He hadn’t realized his mother felt the same way, and he was taken aback because she was one of the most perceptive people he knew. His mother had thought he was in love with Steve? And that Steve was in love with him? All of a sudden Bucky felt panicked, and he rolled the window down, gasping in the cool air. 

“Bucky, what on earth are you doing?” Freddie shouted over the noise of the wind rushing in. “We’re going 70 miles an hour, honey, you can’t open the window!”

Bucky rolled the window back up. “Sorry, just, I felt a little motion sick.”

“Do you need me to pull over?”

“No, I’m ok, I feel a little better.” Bucky put his head against the window, and could see Steve reflected in the side view mirror, momentarily making eye contact with Bucky and furrowing his brow. 

Steve turned around to look at Bucky. “You sure you’re ok, Buck?” Steve looked equal parts concerned and perplexed.

“Yeah, sure Stevie, I’m ok, honest.”

Steve raised his eyebrows as if to say, ‘we’re not done talking about this,’ but didn’t press Bucky for more, and turned back and started chatting with Freddie about the new book club she had joined and how Becca was doing at IU. Bucky took it as an opportunity to zone out, watching the landscape rush past and trying to sort through his feelings, and specifically, where the wave of panic he’d felt had come from, and why now it felt like there was a rock sitting in his belly. It seemed like he’d barely begun organizing his thoughts when his mom’s car pulled onto their street. He pressed his forehead to the window, willing the cool glass to calm his inexplicable nerves until his mother’s house comes into view.

“All right boys, we’re home!” Freddie sing-songs, as she pulled into the driveway. Bucky, finally pulled out of his reverie, shook his head, trying to clear it, and hopped out of the car. He looked up at the house his mother had bought, a beautifully updated Victorian, bigger and fancier than anywhere they had lived in Brooklyn, but, with his mother’s touch, still comfortable and homey. 

“House looks good, ma, you finally get around to fixing the shingles?”

“Ah, not me, no. Mr. Ali from down the street did it. He’s been very helpful.”

Bucky turned to face his mother, raising one eyebrow and letting out a long whistle. “Mr. Ali, huh? The widower? You two been spending a lot of time together, then?”

Freddie turned to Bucky, looking aghast. “Bucky Barnes, I do not appreciate the implication that my relationship with Mr. Ali is anything but neighborly.”

“I never said it was,” Bucky said, grinning. 

Freddie huffed in exasperation. “We’re not talking about Mr. Ali any more, do you understand? Bucky, take you and your husband’s things upstairs. Steven, how would you like some tea?”

Steve looked at Bucky apologetically and shrugged his shoulders, but Bucky rolled his eyes and waved them off. “Yeah, you two go enjoy your tea,” he said, grabbing his and Steve’s bags out of the trunk of the car. “I’ll put these in the guest room.”

Bucky followed Steve and his mother into the house, heading upstairs to the room he stayed in when he came home, and dropping their bags to the floor by the bed. He sat down for a moment, running a hand through his hair. It was just Steve and his ma, he could do this. 

As he was about to head downstairs to join them, Bucky heard a knock and looked up to see Steve standing in the doorway looking sheepish but concerned. 

“How’d you escape from Freddie?” Bucky asked, trying his best to approximate a genuine smile.

“Told her I had to get my insulin to refrigerate. It’s not a complete lie – I really should get it, it shouldn’t stay out for too long. But, um, I wanted to see how you were doing. You seem… shaken up.”

“Yeah, I guess, I mean... I guess this is just a little more difficult than I thought it would be.”

Steve sat down on the bed next to Bucky, placing his hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “We can still come clean about everything. I’m sure she’d understand. I’d be happy to tell her – we’re doing all this for my benefit, doesn’t seem fair to make you uncomfortable, lying to your ma and all, and I’m sure she wouldn’t say anything.”

“No, it’s – it’s ok. I can do this, honest,” Bucky said. He took a deep breath and looked at Steve. “Would it be ok if I held your hand though? When we go back downstairs, I mean. It helps ground me, I guess, and, I just…”

Steve took his hand off Bucky’s shoulder and grabbed his hand, giving it a squeeze, and smiling at him. “Of course, Buck. Of course you can hold my hand.”

Bucky smiled and felt his stomach swoop at the feeling of Steve’s hand in his – something to mull over later. As he let Steve lead him out of the room and downstairs, it struck him that he really wasn’t alone in this, that as much as Steve wasn’t his husband in more than a legal sense, that he was a partner, someone to help shoulder the challenges they’d face. All of a sudden, much of the anxiety that had been weighing down on him since they’d left for Indiana lifted, and Bucky breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe they really could pull this off.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if this one feels a little rushed, I needed the catharsis of writing Steve and Bucky egging Paul Ryan, er, I mean, Brock Rumlow's house today. Surprise! This fic isn't irrelevant anymore, once again.

By the time Bucky and Steve made it downstairs, Freddie had two mugs of tea on the counter for them and had started preparing ingredients for dinner. Steve gave Bucky’s hand a reassuring squeeze, and sat down at one of the stools, inhaling the tea’s aromatic steam deeply before taking a long drink. Bucky just stood there for a moment, watching Steve’s throat work with something like fascination, before shaking his head to clear it and sitting down next to Steve. It was comforting, being in his ma’s kitchen, watching her dance to Rosemary Clooney while she cooked, all the while surreptitiously grinning at Steve. Bucky knew it was bittersweet for Steve, who was, for all intents and purposes, a member of the Barnes family (and now legally a member, to boot). Still, as Bucky knew himself after the death of his father, nothing can replace having your own parents, having your own ma cooking you dinner, listening to her advice, celebrating your triumphs and mourning your losses. Steve seemed happy enough tonight, though, and Bucky felt gratitude well up inside himself, that he should be friends with someone so resilient and strong and wonderful. 

“So what are you boys going to do tonight?” Freddie asked as she plopped meatballs into homemade tomato sauce. “Any interest in coming to the Indivisible Hoosiers meeting with me? You know we’ve got the town hall on Wednesday so we’re trying to get prepared for that.”

“I don’t know, ma, it’s been a long day. But let us know what the plan is for Wednesday, we’re definitely going to be at the town hall.”

“No problem, honey.”

“Say, Mrs. Barnes, do you know if Rumlow’s back in town yet?”

“You know, I saw Sheila at Kroger’s, and she said that Jeanine Rumlow was complaining that Brock isn’t coming home until late tomorrow night, even though the recess started on Friday. If you ask me, he’s got something on the side, but of course you can’t say that to Sheila. But then I don’t know why Jeanine cares, because she’s staying at her sister’s for the baptism until Wednesday morning anyway. Seems awfully controlling, if you ask me. There’s something funny about those Rumlows…”

“Yeah, they’re assholes,” Bucky said.

“James Buchanan, watch your language!” Freddie gasped, and swatted at his arm with her wooden spoon.

Bucky was rubbing his arm in mock indignation and chuckling a little in spite of himself, but Steve had leaned forward on the counter and was looking at Freddie intently.

“So,” Steve said, “none of the Rumlows are home tonight?”

“Steven, don’t get any ideas in your head,” Freddie said.

Steve looked offended. “Mrs. Barnes, I can’t believe you would think I was suggesting anything untoward, I hope you know me better than that.”

Freddie gave Steve an unimpressed look and went back to stirring the sauce, muttering about how she hoped she didn’t have to bail anyone out of the county jail that night. Steve looked at Bucky meaningfully, raising an eyebrow in silent question. Bucky smirked in response. Freddie wouldn’t be bailing anyone out of jail tonight – he and Steve weren’t going to get caught.

***

After a meal Freddie spent by turns catching up with Bucky and eyeing he and Steve suspiciously, a friend came to pick her up for her meeting at the community center, with a final warning not to do anything illegal. As soon as the car was out of sight, Bucky turned to Steve and said, “Eggs or toilet paper?”

“Both?” Steve replied, shrugging and grinning.

“I like the way you think, Rogers. My ma will notice if we use all the eggs, you up for a quick trip to the grocery store?”

“Is Freddie going to mind that you’re taking her car?”

“Nah, we’ll just tell her I took you to a movie, she’ll love that.”

“Think we’ll see Sheila at the Kroger’s?”

“Christ, I hope not, you think my ma is bad, that woman will talk your ear off. Come on, grab your coat, I’ll drive.”

After shifting through a few of his mom’s old pocketbooks and coats for a few minutes, Bucky retrieved the spare set of car keys, and he and Steve drove to the grocery store. They split up, Bucky going in search of eggs and Steve for toilet paper, and met up a few minutes later at the check-out, luckily not having run into Sheila. The cashier eyed their purchases – two dozen eggs and a jumbo pack of toilet paper – suspiciously, but Bucky just turned on the charm (“Home for the week and my sisters just love my omelets!”) and she didn’t say anything.

Bucky navigated them to the Rumlow’s house, and parked a few blocks away. It was a nice house, in an older part of town, and the surrounding homes were far enough away that they weren’t in any real danger of being seen. Still, they snuck up as quietly as they could, choosing a spot underneath a big oak tree where they were unlikely to be picked out. Bucky turned to Steve and held out one of the egg cartons.

“You wanna do the honors, Steve?”

Steve took one of the eggs warily from the carton, consideringly testing its weight in his hand, and suddenly threw it hard against the front of the house. 

“Hey, you’re not fucking around tonight,” Bucky said, impressed, as Steve continued pelting the house with eggs, seemingly trying to get as even a distribution across its façade as possible.

“This asshole took away my health insurance, helped Donald Trump keep refugees out of the country, and now he’s trying to destroy the planet. Fuck him, and fuck his stupid house,” Steve said, grabbing two more eggs and sending them flying up toward the roofline.

“Let me get in on the action here, pal,” Bucky said, grabbing a few of the eggs for himself. “All this piece of shit cares about is lining the pockets of his rich friends.” He threw the eggs hard, wincing as he narrowly missed a window. “He doesn’t give a fuck about his constituents, he doesn’t care that millions of people are going to die because of his bullshit pseudo-libertarian principles.” Worked up, Bucky threw a few more of the eggs, each of these landing hard and dripping satisfyingly over the front door. “And he fucked up my best friend’s plans!” Bucky was shouting now, in spite of himself. “The best guy I’ve ever known, and now his future is all fucked up! Fuck you, Rumlow, you shithead!” and they were out of eggs, but Bucky didn’t seem to be done, still shouting at Rumlow’s house. Distantly, Steve heard a siren, and tugged frantically on Bucky’s sleeve.

“Buck, we’ve gotta get out of here, your mom will kill us if we actually get arrested.”

“Oh, shit,” Bucky said, finally coming back to himself. He looked at Steve seriously, “We didn’t have time to TP it.”

Steve giggled and pulled Bucky along. “Jesus, Buck, you really are gonna get us arrested. I don’t need ‘Egging a Congressman’s House’ on my record.”

Bucky smiled, feeling lighter all of a sudden, and let himself be pulled, running with Steve back to the car well before the police could arrive. As soon as they were back in the car, they both took a deep breath and then started cheering.

“Can you believe we just did that?! Rumlow is going to be so pissed, God, I wish I could see the look on his face!” Steve said, “I’m sure we’ll have put him in a bad mood for the town hall on Wednesday.”

“Well, he deserves it. I hope we start a trend, no congressional Republican’s house is safe!”

Steve turned around then and looked at the empty back seat. “Uh, Buck?”

“Yeah, Stevie?”

“We left the toilet paper outside Rumlow’s house.”

***

When they walked in the door, Freddie was drinking a glass of wine in the living room, seemingly having waited for them to get home.

“Did you boys have a good night?” she asked, critically taking in their disheveled appearances.

“Yeah,” Bucky said, “We, uh, I took Steve to the movies.”

“Is that why your shirt is all rumpled? From the movie?” Freddie replied, raising her eyebrows skeptically.

“Jesus, ma, you and dad always look perfectly put together during your honeymoon?”

Freddie’s face went bright red and she started apologizing immediately.

“No, it’s fine, don’t worry about it, Mrs. Barnes,” Steve said, his face a combination of embarrassment and amusement. “We’re just, um, going to go to bed now,” he finished, wincing at how it sounded.

Freddie somehow turned even redder and shooed them away. “Ok, ok, you boys sleep well. We’re just… not going to talk about this again, you understand?”

“Sure thing, ma,” Bucky said, ushering Steve out of the living room and up the stairs, “We’ll just see you tomorrow! Love you!”

As soon as they were out of earshot, Bucky and Steve collapsed against each other, dissolving into laughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously keep yelling at your congresspeople, especially if they voted to repeal Obamacare today. But yell at them either way. I just strongly feel we should always be yelling at our congresspeople.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO! I am sorry I haven't updated in forever, did I mention I have five jobs? I barely edited this so apologies for any issues I missed. Kudos and comments are extremely appreciated, and I especially love to hear about what you all are doing to take action politically -- please check out my extremely productive political action in the end notes.

Steve and Bucky had fallen asleep almost immediately after getting into bed, the adrenaline of their evening seemingly wearing off all at once, along with any of the awkwardness they had felt sleeping together before. Steve woke up the next morning to the smell of coffee brewing with Bucky octopussed around him again. After carefully extricating himself, Steve threw on a sweatshirt from his bag and followed the coffee scent downstairs. Freddie was mixing pancake batter in the kitchen in a fluffy pink bathrobe and humming to herself. Sitting at the breakfast bar watching her mother cook was Becca, who looked up at Steve and grinned as he made his way into the kitchen.

“Becca? I thought you weren’t coming home till Thursday,” Steve said as Becca stood up and wrapped him in a tight hug.

“No way, I couldn’t miss out on this opportunity to bother my brother and his husband on their honeymoon, especially because those assholes didn’t even invite me to the wedding.”

“Becca, language,” Freddie scolded, giving her daughter a stern look.

Steve just chuckled and shook his head, “Sorry Bex, it was kind of a spur of the moment thing.”

“Yeah, committing your life to another human being is always a decision best made on the spur of the moment.”

Steve blushed and looked down. “Well, you know, it’s not exactly like we’d never thought about it before…”

“Seriously, it’s about time you two got your shit together.” Freddie turned and raised her eyebrows at Becca but didn’t comment. “But don’t think I’m not annoyed I didn’t get to watch you two tie the knot – I expect you to figure out a way to make it up to me,” she said, smirking.

Steve had begun apologizing when the creaking stairs announced Bucky’s arrival. 

“What are we all arguing about in here?” he asked, rubbing at his eyes and grinning when he saw Becca in the kitchen.

“Bucky!” she exclaimed, jumping up from her stool to hug him.

“Bex! What are you doing here?”

“Had to come home to see my bro and brother-in-law, couldn’t let ma have all the fun with you two.”

“Don’t you have exams? We can’t have you failing out on account of me and Steve, I’d never forgive myself.”

“Please, I’m much more responsible than that. Got my professor to let me take my econ exam early, and everything else this semester was papers. I’ve gotta finish up my art history essay, but that’s it.”

Steve’s ears perked up. “Art history, huh? What’s the class?”

“Oh it’s really cool, ‘The Art of Comics,’ it’s super interesting.”

“Man, I was hoping I’d be able to help you out but that’s a little outside my area of expertise.”

“No worries, Stevie, my paper’s mostly written, I just have to format and add a few citations.”

Bucky had grabbed a cup of coffee and slung an arm around his sister. “You take anything else good this semester?”

“Yeah, a poli sci course, ‘Governance and Corruption across the World,’ pretty sure I’m going to declare poli sci as my major.”

Bucky grinned more broadly and squeezed Becca’s shoulder. “That’s great! So are you going to come with us to Rumlow’s town hall tomorrow? Maybe you can teach him a thing or two about proper governance.”

“God, I wouldn’t miss it.”

“Bucky and I aren’t his constituents,” Steve said, “so you’ll have to be the one yelling at him, if we want him to listen to us.”

Becca scoffed. “Rumlow’s not going to listen to anyone, he just wants tax cuts for rich people, He doesn’t care about his constituents unless they’re in the top 1%.”

“You’re not wrong,” Bucky said.

“All right, that’s enough politics for right now,” Freddie said, “who wants pancakes?”

***

Bucky had been in college by the time the Barnes family home moved from Brooklyn to Shelbyville, but Becca had spent a few of her high school years here, and she took them to some of her ‘old haunts,’ as she called them (“Bex, you left a year ago, think it’s tough for anywhere to qualify as an ‘old haunt’,” Bucky teased). They walked up and down Shelbyville’s downtown Main Street, spending most of the morning in a little bookstore. They had lunch in a café, and then walked to a nearby park to enjoy the warm day and catch up more. Steve worried Becca would grill them more on the details of their marriage, but to his surprise she seemed to accept the whole thing without much skepticism. Still, he let himself curl under Bucky’s arm while they sat on the grass, glad for the excuse to be close to him. If he was surprised, Bucky didn’t show it, just tucking Steve in closer and smiling down at him. 

They passed the afternoon learning more about Becca’s classes, how college life was treating her, the guy she was kinda-sorta-maybe dating, her plans for study abroad. She, in turn, asked them about things in New York, what their friends from high school were up to, whether Steve was still liking his MFA program. When Steve mentioned he was friends with Sam, Becca’s face lit up.

“No way! How did I not know you were friends with The Sam Wilson? All my friends listen to ‘One Nation Under Pod,’ it’s basically the only way we can keep up with politics. God, I’m so jealous! You have to introduce me when I visit you guys.”

Steve laughed, a little overwhelmed. “I’ll tell Sam my sister-in-law is a devoted listener.”

“You know, Sam’s always trying to get Steve to go on the show,” Bucky said, ruffling Steve’s hair playfully.

Becca’s eyes widened almost comically. “Steve! You have to do it!”

Steve glared at Bucky. “Yeah, we’ll see. I don’t know what I’d have to talk about.”

“Oh, let’s see, your thoughts on RumlowCare, climate change, Trump’s proposed budget and funding for the arts, net neutrality, LGBT rights…” Bucky replied, giving Steve an unimpressed look. 

“All right, all right, point taken, buddy.”

Bucky just smiled at him and said more gently, “Becca’s right, you’d be great babe.”

Steve blushed at the pet name. “Ok, you guys have worn me down, I’ll talk to Sam when we get back. Maybe start putting together a blog post for their site while we’re here.”

Becca clapped giddily. “I can’t wait! Oh Steve, I’m going to be an internet celebrity, ‘Sister-in-law of One Nation Under Pod Guest Host.’ God, Hannah and Niko are going to be so jealous.”

“You hear that Stevie? Hannah and Niko are going to be so jealous,” Bucky said. “I think you’ve just made my sister’s week.”

***

When the sun started going down, Bucky, Steve and Becca drove back to the house, and ate another of Freddie’s delicious signature meals while they told her about their day in Shelbyville. 

After dinner, Becca whispered something to Bucky, and Bucky rolled his eyes, but turned to Steve afterward. “Becca thinks I ought to take you out on a date.”

“Oh, is that so?” 

“Yeah, I guess there’s a drive-in theater, they’re doing ‘North by Northwest,’ I think it could be fun. What do you say?”

Freddie turned her attention to them, raising one eyebrow skeptically, “Another movie, boys?”

Becca looked on confused as Steve sputtered and Bucky reddened, but responded, “Aw, different ambience ma, you know how it is.”

Freddie’s eyebrow remained raised, but she hummed what might have been approval and said, “Well, far be it for me to tell you how to spend your honeymoon, but newlyweds or not, you boys are going to do the dishes before you go out again. I’m not your maid, you know.”

*** 

Once the dishes were done, Bucky and Steve drove over to the drive-in on the other side of town. Steve loved Bucky’s family, but even the three of them together could be a bit much for Steve, whose own family life had always been equally loving, but… quieter. At the drive-in, Bucky went to buy popcorn and soda, while Steve arranged blankets on the hood of Freddie’s car. By the time the movie started, they were wrapped up together, more to have equal access to the blankets as a practical matter than anything else, but wrapped up together nonetheless. While Cary Grant ran from crop dusters and climbed over Mount Rushmore, Steve stole glances at Bucky. 

It was difficult, to be outwardly so affectionate, and outwardly, to have those affections returned, knowing that it was all a sham. Being with Bucky like this, enjoying themselves, so comfortable with each other – it was easy to forget that none of it was real, that whenever Steve had reliable access to health insurance, all of it would go away. How could Steve go back to their old friendship when it was over? How could he go back to being in a relationship with anyone else now that he had a taste of what could have been with Bucky? 

Bucky caught Steve looking at him just as the movie ended. “Everything ok Stevie?”

Steve shook his head as if to clear it. “Yeah, just… thinking.”

“Mm, don’t hurt yourself pal.”

“Ha ha ha.”

“You ready to go home then?”

“Yeah, let’s go home, Buck.”

As they packed their things up, Steve steeled himself. Sam had been right, they hadn’t thought this through enough, but here they were, and Steve would just have to figure out how to minimize his inevitable heartbreak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you all enjoyed this one! Next chapter is Rumlow's town hall, which I'm certainly looking forward to. I don't have any town halls to go to right now, and both my senators are going to vote predictably on AHCA, but obviously I'm pissed off, so I, erm, sent Mitch McConnell a box of dicks. On a scale of 1-10, that's like a 2 for effectiveness, but at least an 8 in terms of my satisfaction. You too can send Mitch McConnell a box of dicks, or just one big dick, through shipadick.com -- it's pretty affordable, actually. Or you could send him a phallus you make yourself! I can think of lots of things you could send Mitch McConnell, as a matter of fact. In case you're interested, his DC office address is: Russell Senate Office Building, 317 Delaware Ave NE, Washington, DC 20510. Have fun and be safe!


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Erm, hello, I'm back. This fic is still not done, but I wanted to update it, because things are still terrible, huh? I have a gigantic exam starting either this week or next week, so I don't want to promise updates for the next month or so, but maybe. Be advised, there are a bunch of homophobic slurs in this chapter.

Steve was quieter than usual on the drive home, and when Bucky went to the living room to have a cup of tea with Freddie, Steve begged off, claiming he was worn out. Freddie fixed him with a meaningful look, but Bucky just shrugged and wished him a good night. Steve was quieter than usual the next morning, too, listening intently while Freddie instructed them on what questions Indivisible was prioritizing for the town hall and what kind of behavior was expected from the crowd, but otherwise seemingly in his own world. It seemed to bother Freddie and Becca a bit, both of whom kept looking at Bucky questioningly, but Bucky knew that Steve had days like this, would sometimes get overwhelmed in the presence of one or two too many people, and it was best to just give him some space. 

He seemed to perk up a bit on the drive over to the coffee shop where Rumlow was hosting his town hall. By the time they arrived, an hour before anything was due to start, the shop was already packed, but they managed to squeeze up to the front, where a microphone had been set up in the corner. All around them, people were talking to each other about how angry they were, about how the Trump administration’s policies were affecting them, their family members, or people they knew. Steve started a conversation with an animated older woman standing next to him about health insurance, and she encouraged him to ask a question.

“The thing is,” Steve responded a bit sheepishly, “I’m not technically one of his constituents.”

“That’s horseshit,” she responded jovially.

“Excuse me?”

“I said that’s horseshit! Think of it this way – maybe Brock Rumlow’s not your congressman, maybe you can’t vote for him, but he’s the mouthpiece of the ruling party in the House of Representatives right now, and you’ve got a right to give him a piece of your mind. Plus, the Republicans have spent the past twenty years systematically defunding the public education system, if anybody complains, you just tell them you never had any civics classes so you don’t understand how our system of representation works.”

Steve couldn’t help laughing, but he shook his head. “I don’t think it’s the right thing for me to do, but I appreciate the encouragement.”

“Suit yourself,” she said, shrugging her shoulders, and turned away from Steve to pick up an earlier conversation, and Steve turned back to Bucky.

“These people are maniacs,” he said.

Bucky shrugged, “You fit right in.”

Steve was about to raise an objection, but at that moment, Rumlow arrived and people began pushing together to clear a path for him to get to the microphone. Steve, Bucky, Bex and Freddie, along with the rest of the crowd, watched as he made his way through the coffee shop, grinning smugly and waving to people he recognized. Bucky nudged Steve and pointed to the back of the shop, where camera crews from local news stations were set up. 

At the microphone, Rumlow took a moment to thank the owners of the coffee shop, and then asked that everyone gathered bow their heads in prayer. There was groaning audible from across the shop. “We’re here for you to answer our questions, just get on with it!” someone shouted from the back. 

Rumlow chuckled, once again acting the part of the disappointed parent. “Now, now, we’ll come to that in a minute, but we have to make time to remember our Creator, and the Christian foundations of our great nation,” and he bowed his head again.

Another voice shouted, “The founding fathers were deists!”

Rumlow looked up and shook his head sadly. “All right, well, if that’s how you want to do things, I’ll take the first question.” Hands throughout the coffee shop shot up, but before Rumlow could choose someone to ask a question, an aide tapped him on the shoulder and handed him a slip of paper. “Ah,” he said, “here’s a question a constituent who couldn’t be here today emailed our office: ‘Thank you Congressman Rumlow for working to protect the unborn from assaults on their lives by today’s Josef Mengeles, the Democratic Party.’ Well, those may not be the words I would have chosen, but I do always strive to protect the most vulnerable members of society.” Rumlow looked pleased with himself, although the crowd had begun booing. “Ok, now let’s have the first audience question.”

The woman who had been standing next to Steve had managed to get to the microphone first. Freddie leaned over and whispered to Steve, “First question’s about health care – we keep asking until we get an answer.”

The woman with the mic said, “Good morning Congressman, thank you for answering some of our questions today. My name is Delores, and my question is about health care. Once the Affordable Care Act is dismantled, which it is now scheduled to do, many Americans, including many of your constituents, will no longer have access to affordable medical care. One of those Americans is a young man I was talking to earlier – he’d like to tell you his story.” Delores turned and looked at Steve, raising her eyebrows and gesturing for him to come to the mic. Steve blanched, but Bucky grinned and pushed him toward the front of the room. Rumlow and his aides looked irritated, but everyone else seemed energized and eager. 

Steve took a calming breath and took the mic from Delores. “Hi, er, I’m Steve… Uh, well, as Delores mentioned, without the Affordable Care Act, if my circumstances were just a little bit different, I wouldn’t be able to pay for the medicine I need to live. I’m a graduate student, and I’m chronically ill. Without insurance, my medication would cost tens of thousands of dollars every year, and as I’m sure you can imagine, that’s tough to manage on a grad student salary. I’m lucky – I’m on my husband’s insurance and I don’t have to give up my professional goals to survive, but other people won’t be so lucky. With respect, Congressman, repealing the Affordable Care Act is going to be a death sentence for many.”

The room had gone quiet, but Rumlow looked coolly at Steve, a small smirk on his face. “All we’ve done, Steve, is give the market the opportunity to regulate itself – something markets do very well.” Rumlow’s aides grinned at each other.

“I’m not sure you understand how insurance, or economics works,” Steve said, before he could stop himself. There was a collective gasp from the crowd, and some laughing from the back of the room.

“Oh, is that so?” Rumlow asked, eyebrows raised critically, “I’ll have you know I have a degree in economics.”

Steve took another deep breath. “Here’s the thing: when you’re using insurance as a mechanism to deliver medical care, in the presence of information, the insurance market totally falls apart. Let’s say you’re an insurer, and you’re looking at me as a prospective customer. You know that I’m diabetic – the reason I’m in the market for insurance is because there’s no way I can afford insulin on my own, and I need you to subsidize the price I pay for insulin. There’s no way you profit from having me as a customer – at minimum, you’re losing money every time I go to the pharmacy for my normal prescriptions. If the government won’t provide a means to access affordable care, and won’t regulate the prices of medical treatment, then they need to subsidize insurance, or sick people like me will be priced out of health care. The Affordable Care Act is not a perfect answer to the problems with the health care system – mostly because it was designed by conservatives and represents more of a stop-gap measure than a structural solution –but it does make it possible for all Americans to access the medical care we need and deserve.”

“I think you’re forgetting,” Rumlow began, more angrily now, “that money that had been subsidizing insurance purchase will now be going to the states, which surely know better than the federal government how to care for their citizens.”

Steve laughed. “You think Indiana will be better at taking care of its residents than the federal government? Do you have any idea what goes on in the state legislature? They’ve spent years trying ineffectually to remove restrictions on selling alcohol on Sundays, and waste their time on bills that seek to penalize people for exercising their first amendment rights. I don’t want you to think I hold the collective intelligence of the US Congress in particularly high esteem, but you all look like Nobel laureates in comparison to Indiana’s, and pretty much every other state’s, legislature. I sure as hell don’t want them deciding whether and how I should be able to access medical care.”

Rumlow looked at Steve slack-jawed for a few moments, blinking rapidly and clearly struggling to formulate a response. “Very… interesting. Next question, please.”

***

The rest of the town hall was less eventful, at least for Bucky and Steve. There was a lot of back-slapping and high-fiving on the car ride home, and when they turned the TV on to the local news, Steve’s confrontation with Rumlow was the top story. Some national outlets were starting to pick up the story of the Speaker’s confrontation with one of his constituents as well, and Steve had at least a dozen texts from Sam, demanding he join them for a podcast as soon as he and Bucky got back to New York. Steve groaned when he opened Twitter and saw hundreds of notifications. “Buck,” he said, “I’ve made a huge mistake.”

Bucky laughed, “Yeah, we’ll see. Why don’t we hit up Kendall’s, grab a couple of beers, forget about your impending infamy?”

“That sounds good, actually, I could use a drink.”

Becca agreed to drop them off on her way to visit a friend from high school. Kendall’s was divey, but it was cheap and, Bucky figured, unlikely to be busy on a Wednesday night – or at least, not busy with people who’d recognize Steve from the town hall. When they first got there, it seemed Bucky had been right: the bar was mostly empty, and they found a seat far from the door where it was likely to stay warm. He left Steve to get a pitcher, and when he got back to the table not three minutes later, Steve, true to form, had managed to get into an argument.

A guy in a cheap suit with slicked back hair was in Steve’s face, sneering, “Fuckin’ out of towner, a fuckin’ sodomite, comes here and insults our congressman. You’ve got no class, you low life.”

“Listen, buddy, if you want to have a substantive discussion about the merits of our relative positions on health care I’m all ears, but homophobic slurs are beyond the pale,” Steve said, outwardly calm, but Bucky could tell by the way the tips of his ears were going red that he was pissed.

Bucky set the pitcher and glasses down on the table and put his hand on Steve’s shoulder. “What’s going on here, fellas?”

Before Steve could respond, Cheap Suit turned toward the door and smirked. “Hey boss, look who we’ve got here.”

Bucky and Steve looked up and Bucky cursed under his breath. Rumlow walked up to their table a little unsteadily, like maybe this wasn’t the first bar he’d patronized that day. “Well, well,” he said, “If it isn’t the little asshole who insulted me in front of my constituents today.”

“I didn’t realize having a conversation about public policy would make you feel insulted,” Steve said.

“You smug piece of shit. You think you know better than me how to do my job?”

“Of fucking course I do! You are terrible at your job!” Steve was still seated, but Rumlow had leaned over the table and was inches from his face. They weren’t technically yelling at each other, but the intensity of their argument had caught the bartender’s eye, and she was watching them warily as she poured drinks for other patrons. 

“I am protecting the rights of Americans! I am working to ensure that our hardworking citizens don’t have to support society’s leaches, like you and your faggot husband.”

As if it were happening in slow motion, Bucky looked on, paralyzed, as Steve stood up, took a small step back, wound up, and punched Rumlow hard in the face. The next few moments happened in a bit of a blur: Rumlow cradling his face in his hands, the bartender yelling at Steve and Bucky to get out of the bar, frantically calling Becca to come pick them up. Rumlow’s aide came out after them, shouting at Steve that they’d be pressing charges. Bucky stepped between them, and said, as calmly as he could, “Your boss just called me a faggot, and you just called my husband a sodomite. I’m an associate at one of the most powerful law firms in New York City. You sure pressing charges is such a good idea?”

The guy backed off a little and put his hands up. “All right man,” he said, “But tell your husband to go to some anger management classes.”

“Yeah, sure,” Bucky said, “And you just tell your boss to stop being a homophobic asshole.”

The aide scoffed and walked back into the bar. 

Steve looked straight ahead, dazed. “That… could have gone better,” he said.

Bucky laughed, “Yeah no shit, Muhammad Ali.”

“Say Bucky,” Steve said.

“Yeah?”

Steve turned to look at Bucky, grinning, “I just punched Brock Rumlow in the face.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry that Bucky and Steve never get to be home in this fic.

Bucky and Steve stayed in Shelbyville for the next few days, and the rest of the trip was (mercifully) less eventful. They hung out in coffee shops downtown, helped Freddie run errands, went into Indianapolis for a day, and dropped Becca off back at IU before they said goodbye to Indiana and flew back to New York. Although he was sad to leave his mom, Bucky was looking forward to getting back to his routine, and finally having a look at the work he had been neglecting. In his office, he had finally finished going through his email inbox and was about to begin reviewing a brief Jones had been working on, when Tony appeared in his doorway.

“James! Welcome back to civilization! Did you and your new hubby have a relaxing time in America’s heartland?”

“I don’t know if spending your honeymoon at your ma’s house could really be considered relaxing, but Steve did make the national news, so the week wasn’t a total bust.”

“Ah, I saw him on Maddow, your boy has a real… flair for the dramatic. Did he enjoy the trip?”

“I think so, Steve loves my family and it was good for both of us to see them, but I think we’re both happy to be back in New York.”

“Well, don’t unpack your suitcases just yet.”

Bucky groaned. “Jesus Christ, Stark, where are we going now?”

Tony grinned, and called down the hallway, “Hey Pep! Barnes wants to know where we’re taking him!”

Pepper Potts emerged at Tony’s side, smiling at him beatifically. “James, welcome back. Tony and I would like to invite you and Steven to join us this weekend at our house in the Finger Lakes.”

“It’s a hunting lodge!” Tony said, bouncing on his heels and rubbing his hands together.

Pepper gave him a sidelong glance. “There will be no hunting. We don’t let Tony near guns. Not anymore.” She turned back to look at Bucky, “So can we expect you this weekend?”

“I’ll have to check with Steve, but as far as I know we don’t have any plans.”

“Wonderful! Tony and I are going up on Thursday, but we can arrange a rental car for you and Steven. It’s a rather long drive, but since Monday is Memorial Day you’ll still have a chance to really put your feet up.”

“That sounds great, thank you so much for the invitation. I’ll talk to Steve tonight and let you know tomorrow morning.”

Pepper smiled and walked back down the hall. Tony whispered to Bucky, “Don’t tell Pepper, but I’ve got some rifles hidden in the guest house,” and mimed firing a gun.

“Tony!” Pepper called from the other end of the hallway.

Tony blanched and said, “That’s my cue,” before turning and heading off after her. Bucky shook his head and sighed, but got back to work.

***

Steve rolled his eyes when Bucky told him about the invitation but agreed to go, and late on Friday afternoon he met Bucky at Potts & Stark, where the Land Rover Pepper and Tony had reserved for them was waiting in the company garage. 

“This is, um, a really nice car, Buck,” Steve said, eyeing Bucky nervously.

Bucky ran his hand through his hair and chewed on his bottom lip. “Yeah, I was expecting a Ford Focus or something, but I drove in Shelbyville, we’ll be fine,” he said, clearly not fully convincing himself.

“Right, no problem. A five-hour drive across New York state is just like a trip to the grocery store across town.”

“Hey, you wanna drive, punk?”

Steve put up his hands, “Nope, it’s all you. Just hope Pepper and Tony took out insurance.”

Bucky glared at him, but thrust a sheet of paper with the address at him. “Don’t be a wiseass, you’ve gotta navigate for me. This place is in the middle of nowhere.”

Once they had gotten out of the city, Bucky’s anxiety about driving an $80,000 car eased, and by the time they were off the interstate and driving on local roads to Tony and Pepper’s house, Bucky was beginning to think he could get used to driving a Land Rover. Steve successfully discharged his responsibilities as both navigator and DJ, and they made it to Ellicottville, after only a couple of missed turns, by 9 o’clock. At the end of a remarkably long driveway off an isolated country road, Bucky and Steve came to Tony and Pepper’s house: an enormous contemporary-style building which nevertheless didn’t feel out of place in the rural setting. Pepper emerged at the entryway and beckoned them inside. 

Pepper took Bucky and Steve’s bags and gave them to Tony to take to their room. “Welcome, both of you. Tony and I are so glad you could make it,” she said. “Steven, I haven’t had the pleasure – I’m Pepper Potts.”

“Ms. Potts, it’s wonderful to meet you,” Steve said, shaking her hand. “Thank you for having us, this is a spectacular house.”

“Please, call me Pepper,” she said. “James, how was the drive?”

“Once we got out of the city it was great.” Before he could offer anything more on the drive, Tony came bounding back down the stairs. 

“All right gentlemen, are you ready for the grand tour? I’m Tony, by the way,” Tony said, offering his hand to Steve, “And I presume you’re Steve?”

“Sure am, it’s nice to meet you,” Steve said, shaking Tony’s hand.

“I’ve got to say, I loved what you had to say about your little town hall brouhaha on One Nation Under Pod. Rumlow’s a prick – a prick who’s giving me a gargantuan tax break mind you – but a prick nonetheless. It's nice when guys like that get put in their place.”

“You listen to One Nation Under Pod?” Steve asked, incredulous. He had agreed to an interview with Sam and Nat earlier in the week and Sam told him it was one of their most downloaded episodes, but he was having a hard time imagining that anyone had actually listened to it. He looked at Bucky, but he looked just as surprised as Steve.

“Oh yeah, all the time, those guys are great. You should get them to give you a podcast – it’s the future of media,” Tony said, giving Steve a meaningful look. 

“Hmm, I’ll take that under advisement.”

“All right,” Tony said, seemingly satisfied, “let me show you boys around.”

***

Pepper and Tony’s house was enormous, and it was clear the furnishings were expensive, although they were less ostentatious than they might have been if Tony alone had been charged with decorating. Steve nevertheless noted an enormous chandelier made out of antlers that suggested he had not been completely shut out of the house’s interior design. A great room attached to a dining area was located off the chef’s kitchen. Tony also showed them a wood-paneled office, a game room with a fancy billiards table, and a cinema room. Finally, he led them upstairs and showed them to their bedroom.

“Here’s where you’ll be staying this weekend.” He led them into a comparatively modest bedroom with a fire roaring in a stone fireplace with two arm chairs in front of it, and a four poster bed that looked exceptionally inviting to Steve, especially after a five-hour drive and half an hour with Tony. “I’ll let you two get settled in. Pep and I will be on the back porch with a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape if you’d like to join us.”

“Thanks Tony, we’ll be down in a few minutes,” Bucky said.

Once their door was closed and Tony was safely out of earshot, Steve collapsed on the bed. “He’s awfully… enthusiastic.”

Bucky chuckled as he started unpacking his bag. “Yeah, he takes a little getting used to. Hey, you doing ok? You look beat.”

“It’s been a long day, but I’m all right.”

Bucky looked concerned, but let it drop. “You up for a glass of wine with Pepper and Tony?”

“Do you think they’d be upset if I just crashed tonight? I’m really tired and I’ll be more fun to be around tomorrow if I just go to sleep now.”

“Yeah, of course, I’m sure they won’t mind, they know it’s a long trip. I’ve gotta put in some time with my bosses, though, that ok?”

Steve looked at Bucky as seductively as he could, “But babe, how will I fall asleep if you’re not here to wrap me up in your big strong arms?” 

Steve could have sworn Bucky shuddered minutely before laughed and threw a pair of socks at Steve, “I think you’ll manage somehow. I probably won’t be out there for too long, but if you’re asleep when I get back I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Sounds good, have fun, don’t let Tony get you too drunk.”

Bucky nodded and gave Steve a little salute as he left the room and shut the door behind him. Steve sank into the bed, doing his best not to think about Bucky’s reaction to his sarcastic come-on. It was just in his head. It had to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you didn't notice, we've finally got a chapter count on this baby! It's looking like there will be three more chapters (although it could be four), but things are starting to wrap up. It's only taken me a year (sorry).


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've only barely re-read this once so apologies for any mistakes!

Bucky stayed up with Pepper and Tony for about an hour, until his yawning gave away his fatigue, and Pepper sent him back inside to go to sleep. In their bedroom, Steve was sound asleep and sprawled across the bed, gripping Bucky’s pillow tightly. After stripping to his boxers and undershirt, Bucky gingerly shifted Steve off of his pillow and then crawled into bed, only to have Steve wrap his arms around Bucky. As much as he rolled his eyes, Bucky couldn’t distract himself from the way his heart thudded as Steve clung to him – at least, not entirely. 

Bucky woke up to morning light streaming through the windows of the guest bedroom. He wiped sleep from his eyes and checked his phone – it was already 9:30, not an unusual time for him to wake up on the weekends, but Steve was normally a naturally early riser, and he was still sound asleep – and incidentally, still plastered up against Bucky.

“Hey, Stevie,” Bucky said under his breath, and, not able to help himself, gently brushed Steve’s slightly too long bangs off his face. “Buddy, it’s 9:30, time to get up.”

Steve huffed but opened one eye to glare at Bucky. “S’too early,” he said, closing his eye again and leaning his head into Bucky’s hand. 

Bucky chuckled a little, but he took the hint and continued carding his fingers through Steve’s hair. “You feeling ok? Usually you’re up and at ‘em by 7.” Steve just hummed, and Bucky felt his forehead. He was a little warm, but not alarmingly so. “C’mon, Steve, bet Pepper’s got one of those fancy espresso machines, you could probably sweet talk her into making you a cappuccino.”

Steve perked up and opened his eyes wide at that. “You think?” 

“Yeah, you fuckin’ hipster,” he said.

“All right, I’ll get up, just… go take your shower, I want another ten minutes.”

“Ok, deal,” Bucky said, and, without thinking, kissed Steve’s forehead. Bucky’s eyes went big and it felt like all the blood in his body was rushing to his face, but Steve just snuffled happily and fell back asleep. Bucky let out a slow breath and carefully extricated himself from Steve’s arms. 

He crept into the en suite bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror. “What the fuck, Barnes?”

***

Bucky spent a little more than ten minutes in the bathroom, trying to compose himself. When he cautiously walked back into the bedroom, Steve was rousing himself. He didn’t mention the kiss, just smiled at Bucky and sat up taller in bed.

“Don’t know what’s gotten into me this morning, guess I just needed some extra shut-eye.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Bucky said, “I suppose you’ve sort of been burning the candle at both ends, what with all this travel and getting your final project wrapped up.”

“Hmm, yeah, that’s probably it,” Steve said as he checked his blood sugar. “Huh, that’s weird.”

“What’s up?”

“I’m high… really high. I checked last night, right?”

“Yeah, you didn’t say anything then.”

Steve scrolled through entries on his meter and checked his pump. “Weird, must be stress or something.”

“Are you gonna be ok?” Bucky asked, looking at Steve worriedly.

“Yeah,” Steve replied, “just gotta correct. I guess that explains why I slept so long.”

“Do you need me to do anything?”

Steve waved his hand at Bucky dismissively. “Just go downstairs and impress your bosses, I’ll be down in a few minutes.” Bucky looked at Steve appraisingly for a few moments, but shrugged and left Steve to calculate his bolus. 

Downstairs, Tony and Pepper were sitting beside each other at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and reading the local paper in companionable silence. When she saw Bucky, Pepper broke into a warm smile. “James, good morning! Did you and Steven sleep well?”

Bucky returned her smile and nodded at Tony. “We did, thank you. Couldn’t have asked for a more comfortable room.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” she said. “Is Steven sleeping in, or will he be joining us for breakfast?”

“He slept later than he normally does, but he’ll be down in a few minutes.”

“Wonderful. Well, there are some breakfast pastries and fruit on the counter there, and help yourself to coffee or tea, whatever you prefer.”

Bucky thanked Pepper and began arranging a plate for himself. Steve came into the kitchen as Bucky was fiddling with Pepper and Tony’s fancy espresso machine. He greeted Tony and Pepper, then wrapped his arm around Bucky, who distractedly returned the gesture. Steve sleepily kissed him on the jaw and tucked his head into Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky looked at him with raised eyebrows, but Steve just smiled up at him, so he shrugged and continued his fussing. 

“You need help, babe?” Steve asked.

“Do you know how to work this thing?”

Steve disentangled himself from Bucky, and with the practiced ease of an expert, arranged the levers and dials of the espresso machine before pressing a final button and producing a perfect cup of coffee. Bucky turned to look at Steve in surprise again, but Steve just shrugged. “It was that six months at Blue Monday’s in college, remember?” He passed the cup to Bucky and began making one for himself. “Go join Pepper and Tony, I’ll be over in a second.”

Bucky was tucking into a particularly delicious-looking blueberry muffin when Steve slid into the booth next to him. Once again, Steve pressed up against Bucky, and Bucky fought an urge to ask what was going on. Maybe when they were in private… But then again, it’s not like all the touching was doing any harm, especially because they were a newly married couple, and anything less than this much physical contact might have looked suspicious. Plus, Bucky couldn’t have said he minded; it was nice, in fact, to be so close to Steve. 

“You all right there, James?” Tony asked, looking at him from over his newspaper. “You’re looking at that muffin like it just gave you a calculus problem to solve.”

“Ha,” Bucky said, “Uh, no, brain’s still on work, I guess.”

“Hmm, we’ll have to do something about that. Steve, do you mind if I steal your hubby for a few hours?”

Steve looked at Bucky, and then at Pepper, “Not if Pepper doesn’t mind my company.”

Pepper gave Steve one of her beatific smiles. “I’ve been looking forward to getting to know you better, Steven. James has mentioned you’re studying fine arts – there are some pieces I’m considering for our Manhattan apartment; I was hoping you could advise me.”

“That sounds great,” Steve said enthusiastically, returning her smile. 

“Perfect!” Tony said, leaping up from the table. He kissed Pepper on the head, and pointed at Bucky. “I’ve got some important things to discuss with you.” Tony paused and looked at Bucky critically. “You might want to put on something a little warmer. You didn’t happen to bring an orange vest, for example, did you?” Bucky looked at Tony wide-eyed, and when he didn’t respond immediately, Tony barreled on. “Doesn’t matter, I’ve got extras, meet me at the deck when you’re done with breakfast, I’ve got to… get everything ready.”

Tony sprinted off toward the back of the house, leaving Bucky to gawk helplessly at Pepper. “Is he taking me hunting? I thought you forbade him from using guns. Pepper, am I about to get shot?”

Pepper laughed and shook her head, “Just wait and see, James.”

***

When Bucky met Tony on the deck a few minutes later, Tony was holding up an orange vest for him and grinning like a mad man. 

“Are you ready to kill something?” Tony asked, seemingly sincerely.

Bucky stared mutely at Tony for a few seconds. “I am in no way ready to kill anything, and I thought you weren’t allowed to have guns.”

“Oh, it’s not a gun-gun, and we’re not actually going to kill anything – you don’t think I’m some kind of barbarian, do you?”

“I’m… not sure I understand what’s going on here.”

Tony threw the vest at Bucky. “You’re about to see my newest toy, Barnes, and you’re going to love it.”

Tony’s newest toy turned out to be a pair of rifles that looked like they came out of a 60s sci-fi movie and a set of very weird-looking animatronic deer. The deer were arranged in a semi-circle around Bucky and Tony, and were blinking robotically at them.

“Tony,” Bucky said, taking in the scene before them, “you really are full of surprises.”

“You like it?” Tony asked eagerly.

“If I’m being totally honest, it’s creepy as hell.”

“Aw, don’t be like that, just think of it as… laser tag, for the rural set.”

“Did you build these yourself?” Bucky asked, approaching one of the deer, which made a disconcerting whirring sound and flinched away from him.

Tony looked at Bucky incredulously. “Yeah Barnes, I build robotic deer in my copious free time.”

Bucky shrugged, “Wouldn’t put it past you. Couldn’t have been cheap though.”

“I am an equity partner at one of the most successful law firms in New York City, I am incredibly rich.”

Bucky snorted at that, but grabbed one of the rifles. “All right, let’s go fake shoot some fake deer.”

***

Two hours later, Tony and Bucky were still prowling around the woods, Tony with four ‘kills’ and Bucky with none. 

“Has anyone ever told you how bad you are at this? You are truly terrible at this,” Tony said, not attempting to hide his glee.

“That’s why I’m an attorney and not a fucking sniper, Tony,” Bucky huffed, turning his head as he caught a glimpse of one of the robots and let off a shot. He missed again, apparently, and he and Tony watched it scamper back into the forest. Bucky was nearly ready to drop his weapon, run after it, and try to take it down with his bare hands. He wasn’t sure if that would be an inappropriate thing to do in front of your boss, although in this case his boss was Tony Stark, and if anything, he probably would have thought it showed admirable enthusiasm, or something.

“Ah, I’m glad you mentioned that.”

“Look, you don’t need to rub it in Tony, I know I’m bad at this.”

“No, no, no, you misunderstand me, Barnes. You might not be able to hit the broad side of a barn, but you’re one of the best associates we have. We wanted to meet Steve, of course, but Pepper and I also wanted to have you out here to see if you might be interested in a promotion to junior partner.”

Bucky turned to face Tony, jaw slack as he tried to process the proposal Tony had just made. Junior partner would be – well, it would be a big step up. He would have more security at the firm, hopefully more freedom over the kind of cases he took, higher pay – of course, it also meant longer hours and more responsibility – but he and Steve would be able to move to a nicer place, maybe they could get a dog? He had to resist the urge to throw his arms around Tony.

“I – Tony, I don’t know what to say, I mean – of course I’d be interested, I’m thrilled! Thank you. Jesus, thank you.”

“Now, now, ‘Tony’ will do just fine.”

Bucky was too happy to even roll his eyes. “Any chance we can head back, then? As much fun as I’m having not shooting anything, I’d love to tell Steve, and thank Pepper, of course.”

“No problem! Just – um…” Tony looked around, trying to get his bearings. “We should head, uh, that way,” he said, pointing in a seemingly arbitrary direction.

“Tony… do you know where we are?” 

“Don’t insult me like that, of course I know where we are! Granted, there’s bound to be a small margin of error, but we’ll be back in no time!”

***

Four hours later, Tony and Bucky managed to find the house again, by which time Bucky’s excitement about his promotion has dulled somewhat. Realizing he would be able to tell Steve the news, though, he grinned at Tony and bounded up the stairs to the deck. The grin fell off his face, though, when he saw Pepper’s expression, and then Steve on the couch beside her, huddled in a blanket and looking miserable. Bucky sat down next to him and put his hand to Steve’s forehead – he was burning up.

“Steve, sweetheart, what happened?” Bucky asked, but Steve just sighed and buried his head in Bucky’s chest. He turned to Pepper for an explanation.

“We went into town to go to one of the galleries, Steven seemed fine on the way but while we were looking at the exhibition he got pale and shaky so we came back. I’m sorry we couldn’t reach you – the reception here is abysmal – but he’s checked his blood sugar and he’s had plenty of water and some ibuprofen, so his fever should come down soon. He’s a bit weak, though – I think he might have the flu.” 

“Thanks for looking after him, Pepper. I’m going to take him up to our room,” Bucky said.

“Of course,” Pepper said, “let us know if you need anything.”

Any earlier hesitancy about touching Steve forgotten, Bucky bundled him up in the blanket he had wrapped around him and picked him up, carrying him bridal-style back to their bedroom. 

“Don’t gotta carry me, Buck.”

“Yeah, I’d like to see you try to make it up these stairs right now, punk.”

“Could if you’d just put me down,” Steve protested weakly, but Bucky could tell by the absence of resistance that Steve knew he was in no state to be doing anything more strenuous than lying down. 

As soon as Steve was safely ensconced in the bed, Bucky wet a small towel in the bathroom and brought it back to Steve, placing it on his forehead and over his closed eyes. Steve shivered a little at first, and then leaned into the cool towel. Bucky was gently rubbing it across Steve’s face when he felt Steve shudder and begin crying.

“Aw, Stevie, none of that, we’ll get you back to new in no time,” Bucky said.

“I’m ruining - your chance - to impress your - bosses, Buck,” Steve said between sobs.

“Shh, no, you’ve got it all wrong, they brought us out here to impress me – Tony offered me junior partner, Steve.” Bucky couldn’t help smiling when he remembered. He whispered, conspiratorially, “We’re gonna be rich, Stevie.”

Steve sniffled and took a deep but shuddering breath. “So they’re not – you don’t think they’re upset?”

“How are they going to get upset about you getting sick? It’s not like you gave yourself the flu on purpose.”

“Well still, you should be down there popping champagne with Pepper and Tony, not up here with your invalid pal.”

“Steve, I’m happy about the promotion, but you’re my number one priority. You know that, right?”

“Yeah?” Steve asked, looking hopeful but so vulnerable it made Bucky’s breath catch.

“Course, I married you, didn’t I?” 

“Suppose you did,” Steve said, and he smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. 

Bucky paused and opened his mouth to ask Steve what was bothering him when his stomach made an almighty growling sound. “Listen, Tony had me wandering around the woods for almost six hours today and I haven’t eaten anything but a granola bar since breakfast, will you be ok for a few minutes while I run downstairs to grab us some grub?”

“Sure thing, Buck,” Steve said, tucking himself more completely into the blankets. Bucky paused again, but nodded at Steve and left, shutting the door softly behind him. Downstairs, he assured Pepper and Tony that Steve would be all right, and let them talk him into sitting with them for a few minutes to eat. Tony was profusely apologetic about keeping them out for so long, but Bucky brushed him off. He accepted a bowl of soup and crackers from Pepper, along with a small bottle of Advil and a glass of water, and went back upstairs. 

When he got back to the room, Steve was tossing and turning. Bucky set the food down on the nightstand and gently shook Steve’s shoulder to rouse him. Steve sleepily blinked his eyes open. “You up for some soup?” Bucky asked.

Steve shook his head, “Not hungry.”

“Well at least have some more water and another ibuprofen before you go back to sleep, ok?”

Steve accepted the pill and took a few long sips of water, before handing the glass back to Bucky and curling up again. “Are you going back downstairs?”

“No, pal, I’m going to sleep, Tony wore me out today. God, I didn’t even tell you about the robotic deer! He’s out of his mind, Steve, you wouldn’t have believed it.”

Steve murmured sleepily in response, and Bucky chuckled. “Ok, you’re right, time for light’s out.” He shut off the light by Steve’s side of the bed, then went to the bathroom to take a quick shower, and returned to find Steve sleeping fitfully. He climbed into the bed and Steve wrapped around him, and Bucky found himself carding his fingers through Steve’s hair again. After a few minutes of Bucky’s ministrations, Steve breathed out a long sigh and seemed to settle, going almost limp in Bucky’s arms. Once again, Bucky tried to convince himself that he wasn’t feeling anything other than friendship, but he was finding that more and more difficult to believe. 

***

Steve spent most of the next day in bed, and Bucky spent most of it with him, both making sure he was comfortable and staying hydrated, and catching up on reading. He went downstairs every couple of hours to eat, bring up food for Steve, and update Pepper and Tony. By Monday, Steve’s fever had broken, and even though he wasn’t completely recovered, he was feeling human again. They had planned to leave Monday morning to get back to the city before it started getting dark, so when it was clear that there was no need for Steve to spend another day in bed, they packed up and got ready to go. Steve was apologetic about not being good company, but Pepper and Tony insisted that they’d loved hosting him and he and Bucky should come back later in the summer. Pepper told him that she’d decided to purchase one of the paintings Steve had recommended at the gallery before they’d had to leave, and he gave her a blushing smile. 

Although he’d felt badly about putting Tony and Pepper out, Steve felt guiltier for taking Bucky away from them for so much of the weekend. Bucky was quieter than normal on the drive back, occasionally sneaking glances at Steve and furrowing his brow like he was thinking something over. Steve tried to ignore it, but it was obvious that Bucky was having second thoughts about their sham marriage. He should have known it was only a matter of time before Bucky would realize that he should be with someone who didn’t have all Steve’s shit to deal with. Especially after he had been so sick, Steve knew that Bucky wouldn’t tell him he wanted to call everything off, but maybe Steve could convince him to see someone else, too. He decided that when they got home, he would find Bucky someone who could make him happier than Steve could, even if it broke his heart in the process.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're almost done, you guys! I hope you like this chapter, let me know what you think in the comments!

For a few days, things between Steve and Bucky were normal, if a bit strained. Bucky seemed to be more restrained with his touches than he had been at Tony and Pepper’s, and they went back to sleeping in their own bedrooms (of course, Steve thought, they weren’t around other people). Steve felt well enough on Tuesday that he went to his studio for most of the day, and meetings with his advisor and preparations for his final project kept him busy the rest of the week. In the evenings, when he and Bucky were both in the apartment, they ate dinner together in the living room while they watched Netflix, Bucky always a respectful distance from Steve on the couch. Sometimes Steve caught Bucky looking at him contemplatively, but when Steve would raise an inquiring eyebrow, Bucky would just shrug and turn back to the TV. He almost wished Bucky would just come out and tell Steve that their arrangement wasn’t working anymore so that Steve didn’t have to force the issue. 

On Friday afternoon, after another long meeting with his advisor, Steve checked his phone and saw that Sam had texted him.

Sam: We’re doing drinks tonight and you and Bucky need to come because we miss you guys :((((((

Steve: The whole crew?

Sam: Yeah, maybe newbies too, some of Riley’s work friends might come

Steve: K, I’ll be there and I’ll try to bring Bucky

Sam: All right man, Dempsey’s at 8, we’ll see you guys there!!

Having decided that he was done painting for the day, Steve texted Bucky the plan for the evening, smiling to himself when he remembered that he and Bucky would be doing their married-couple act tonight. No sooner had the thought of Bucky with his arms around Steve occurred to him than he felt a flood of guilt wash over him. Bucky was unhappy, and he was unhappy because of Steve. Suddenly the idea of continuing to take advantage of Bucky the way he had been was intolerable. He couldn’t exactly end things, not before he found a job, but Bucky had said he’d be open to seeing someone else when they’d made their original agreement. Riley and Clint were likely to be there, but other couples had open relationships, right? He would just have to convince Bucky.

***

Dempsey’s was packed when Steve arrived, but Sam and Nat had scored one of the big booths toward the back of the room. Clint was ordering drinks at the bar surrounded by a gaggle of people wearing One Nation Under Pod merch. Steve watched as a young woman wearing a sweatshirt with “Oh no” spelled out in ASL threw her arm around Clint’s neck and pulled out her phone to take a selfie. Clint grinned at the camera, clearly in his element. Steve chuckled, shaking his head, and sat down with Nat and Sam.

“Steven Rogers!” Sam exclaimed, “You feeling better? I heard you weren’t doing so hot.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty much back to normal, I think all the traveling was too much for me. It’s good to be back to the routine, you know?”

“Glad to hear it,” Nat said. “I’m going to try to collect Clint from his fans, can I grab you a drink?”

“Oh, sure, thanks Nat, um, do they still have that IPA from Coney Brewing on tap?”

Nat’s nose scrunched up, “You boys and your hops, I don’t know how you drink that stuff. Yeah, I think it’s still here, I’ll be back in a second.”

Once Nat had gotten up, Sam leaned over the table and looked at Steve carefully. “You really doing ok? I mean, apart from being sick, are you and Barnes all right?”

Steve nearly came clean to Sam, but steeled himself instead and gave him a small smile. “Yeah, we’re good. It can be… a little awkward, I guess, but we’re figuring it out.”

Sam didn’t look satisfied, but he sighed and leaned back. “All right, Steve, but you know if things start going south you can talk to me.”

Steve bit his lip, thinking it over. He knew Sam wasn’t the type to tell him ‘I told you so,’ but he didn’t relish the idea of admitting he’d been wrong. Still, it would be nice to get the nagging guilt off his chest to someone, even if it wasn’t Bucky. He’d nearly decided to say something when Riley sat down next to Steve and threw an arm around him.

“Steve! Long time no see, buddy.” 

“Hey Riley,” Steve said, “How’ve you been doing?”

“Pretty good, man. How’s married life treating you so far?”

Sam gave Steve an unimpressed look, but Steve smiled back at him bashfully, and then turned to Riley. “It’s good, we’ve been kind of all over the place since the wedding, it’s been nice to just be home for a while.”

“I hear ya. Is that husband of yours coming out tonight?”

“Yeah, he should be here soon, Stark’s keeping him a little late tonight but he promised he’d be out by 8:30.”

“Good! We’ve gotta discuss our fantasy league, I’m going to kick his ass again this year.” Sam and Steve rolled their eyes simultaneously. Oblivious, Riley rubbed his hands together, clearly already planning his lineup. Before he could launch into his fantasy strategy, a tall, slim woman with short dark hair walked up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. Steve paled when he saw her.

“Hey Riley,” she said, “We just wrapped up dinner with our client, Keisha and I are going to be at the bar if you want to join us.”

“Why don’t you two come over here and sit with us, there’s plenty of room! Hey, I don’t think you’ve met my people, this is my boyfriend Sam, and our friend Steve. Guys, this is Liz Walker, she and Keisha are working with me on that Midtown apartment building project I was telling you about.”

Liz smiled at Sam, but her smile faltered a little when she noticed Steve, “Nice to meet you Sam,” and a little more stiffly, “Good to see you again, Steve.” Turning back to Riley, she said, “I think we’re just going to hang out at the bar for now, maybe we’ll come by in a little while.”

Riley looked bemused, but just shrugged. “All right, we’ll be here.”

As soon as she had walked away, Riley and Sam turned to look at Steve. “Liz is, uh, Bucky’s ex,” he said. “I had no idea you two worked together, Riley.”

Realization dawned on Riley’s face, followed by something like horror. “Oh God, Bucky’s the ex?”

Steve’s heartbeat picked up. “What’s that face mean, Riley?”

Riley schooled his face into something like composure. “Nothing, nothing, just… I don’t think she knows you guys are married, she’s been talking about getting back together with him. She seemed, uh, really excited about it.”

Just then, Nat came back with Clint, as well as a pitcher for the table in one hand and Steve’s IPA in the other. He took it from her and downed it in four gulps. Natasha looked horrified.

“Steve, that’s an eight-dollar beer you just inhaled.”

Steve grunted and pulled a ten out of his wallet and passed it to her. Sam, Nat, Clint and Riley all stared at Steve with a mix of confusion and concern.

“I’m fine, ok? Sorry, I was just… surprised to see her, that’s all,” he said.

“See who?” Nat asked.

“Bucky’s ex is Riley’s colleague, she’s at the bar over there,” Sam said, pointing to Liz and Keisha. Natasha raised one perfectly manicured eyebrow at Steve, who just shook his head and looked down into his empty pint glass. 

“Well,” she said, “this should be an interesting evening.”

***

Steve’s friends let the subject of Liz drop after a few moments of uncomfortable silence, and after catching up on their last couple of weeks, Steve excused himself to get another drink from the bar. He checked to make sure Sam, Nat, Clint and Riley weren’t paying attention to him, ordered and took two shots in quick succession, and returned to the table with another pint of beer. Just as he’d sat down, Sam perked up, and Steve turned around to see Bucky walking toward them, looking tired, but – shit – devastatingly handsome, with his tie loosened and the top buttons of his Oxford shirt undone. His face lit up when he saw them, and Steve felt like his stomach was filled with a huge rock when he thought about what he was planning to do. 

Bucky slid into the booth next to Steve and casually wrapped an arm around him, pressing a kiss to Steve’s temple before saying hello to everyone. Riley leaned across Steve to greet Bucky, then cleared his throat and said, “Just a head’s up, your ex is at your 5 o’clock.”

Bucky turned around, too quickly, to see that Liz was staring at him. Bucky gave a tentative wave and turned back to his friends. “Are she and Keisha going to join us?” he asked, wincing a little.

“I don’t know,” Nat said, “she just saw you kiss Steve, she might keep her distance.”

“She doesn’t have to,” Steve said, “if, uh, if you don’t want her to.”

Bucky laughed nervously, “I haven’t really talked to her since we broke up. I don’t think she, uh, knows I got married.”

“Well,” Clint said, “given the way she’s glaring daggers at you right now, I think she may have figured it out.”

Bucky groaned and put his head in his hands. Steve whispered in his ear, “If you want to talk to her, it’s ok with me. I think she might like to see you.”

“Based on the way we ended things, I think you’re probably wrong, buddy,” Bucky responded under his breath.

“Hmm, that’s not what Riley seemed to think,” Steve said, aiming for suggestive but landing squarely at whiny. 

Bucky stiffened and looked at Steve appraisingly. “Why do you want me to talk to Liz?”

“I just thought… you guys were good together, I thought you really liked her.”

Bucky shook his head. “Just leave it alone, ok, Steve?”

Steve sighed and nodded, and felt Bucky relax a bit beside him. Bucky poured himself a beer, and for the next twenty minutes he told the group about his promotion and excitedly explained some of the projects he would be able to work on as a junior partner. Sam was asking him about his new hours when Natasha pointed at someone who had just walked into the bar.

“Sorry to interrupt James, but Sam, isn’t that the Holland Mattress CEO?”

“Shit, yeah, that’s him. Listen guys, we’ve gotta go talk to this guy before he leaves, they never paid us for the ads we did for them and no one’s been able to get in touch with them, do you mind if we leave you here for a few?”

“Get that money, baby,” Riley said, and leaned across the table to kiss Sam. Sam smirked and he and Natasha stalked away toward the CEO. Steve turned around and saw him blanch when he recognized Natasha. Riley slid out of the booth and into Sam’s seat next to Clint so he could talk to Bucky, and Steve got up to go back to the bar. 

“I’m gonna hit the head, do any of you want anything while I’m up?” Steve asked. Riley, Clint and Bucky all shook their heads and continued their conversation. When he was sure they weren’t watching him, Steve walked to the end of the bar, where Keisha and Liz were still sitting together. 

“Uh, hi Liz,” Steve said, running a hand through his hair nervously.

Liz turned to face him. “Steve,” she said, “This is my friend Keisha.” 

Keisha gave Steve a smile and a timid wave. “Nice to meet you Steve. Liz, I’m going to step outside for some fresh air,” she said, looking at Liz meaningfully, “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Liz smiled at her and nodded, then turned back to Steve once Keisha was out of earshot. “I saw you and Bucky… canoodling over there. I didn’t think he had the courage to tell you how he felt about you, but, well, it seems like I was wrong. Congratulations, I suppose.”

Steve frowned at her. “No, you don’t understand. We’re – God, this is going to sound crazy – we’re married, technically, but we have kind of, um, an open relationship thing? We’re trying to keep it quiet, but I really don’t think he’d mind seeing you again.”

Liz raised her eyebrows in surprise. “So you’re not really together?”

“Well, like I said, we’re trying to keep that quiet, but no, not really.”

“Interesting.”

“Listen, you’re welcome to come join us, just, Riley and our friend Clint over there don’t know about our… arrangement, so, if you could just be a little bit subtle about it?”

“I’m sure I can be subtle, but I don’t know about the two of you.”

Steve frowned at her again. “Ok, um, I’m heading to the bathroom, but like I said, I think Bucky would like to see you.”

As he was walking away Liz smiled at him inscrutably, which Steve did his best to ignore. When he returned from the bathroom, Riley and Clint had joined Sam and Nat at the bar, and Liz was sitting across from Bucky at their table, having what looked to be a tense conversation. As soon as Bucky saw Steve he excused himself and left the table, walking angrily toward Steve.

“You and I need to have a conversation outside.”

“Buck, listen…”

“Now, Steve.” Bucky pushed past him and walked toward the door, motioning for Steve to follow when he stayed planted in the middle of the bar. Steve groaned and moved to follow him outside.

“What the hell is going on with you?” Bucky asked once they were out of the bar. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Buck,” Steve said sheepishly.

“I’m talking about the fact that you’ve been trying to push Liz on me all night, which I don’t recall asking you to do, and given the conversation I just had with her, it doesn’t exactly sound like something she wanted either.”

“But I thought… Riley said she was interested in you?”

“Yeah, buddy, before she knew I had gotten married!”

“God, I’m sorry Bucky, maybe we should actually call this off?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the fact that our fake marriage is just going to keep cock blocking you, I’m sorry you’re saddled with somebody you’ve gotta take care of.” Steve heard his voice start to pitch higher, and he choked out, “I’m a fucking burden, ok, you think I don’t know that?” 

“Steve –” Bucky started, and tried to put his hand on Steve, but Steve pulled back and twisted away from him. 

“You deserve more than this, Bucky!”

“Steve, will you listen to me for a single goddamned minute?” Bucky tried to interrupt, but Steve barreled on.

“You deserve to be with somebody who’s good for you! You deserve to be with somebody you’re actually in love with!”

“I am in love with you, you fucking mook!” Bucky shouted, and immediately both men paled, staring at each other.

“You’re – Buck, did you just… did you just say you’re in love with me?”

Bucky sighed deeply. “Yeah, Steve. Yeah, I did. I am. I’m in love with you. I’m, shit, I’m completely in love with you, Stevie.” When Steve just stared him without responding, Bucky continued, “Look, I know this wasn’t the deal, I can… if you want me to I can stay with Nat and Clint for a while until we figure things out –” but before he could finish, Steve rushed forward, throwing his arms around Bucky and kissing him deeply. Steve felt Bucky try to hold back a sob, so he gentled the kiss, rubbing Bucky’s back until he felt Bucky sigh and relax against him. He pulled back and wiped the wetness on Bucky’s cheeks.

“Stevie –” Bucky said, and then paused, his eyebrows raised in a silent question.

“Yeah,” Steve said in response, “if it wasn’t already obvious, I’m in love with you too. Think I’ve been in love with you forever.”

Bucky’s answering smile lit up his face, and Steve couldn’t help but smile back at him. For several long moments they just looked at each other, grinning, before Bucky cleared his throat.

“So, uh, did you close your tab?”

“Why, were you not planning on staying?” Steve asked, teasingly. 

“I was just thinking, there are a few other activities we might want to try tonight.”

“Bucky, whatever might you mean?” and Bucky rolled his eyes, but took Steve’s hand and started pulling him back toward their apartment.

“Come on, punk, we’re going home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They're so sappy (too sappy?) but I love them! We're really going to earn the explicit rating in the next chapter, so get excited for that. Also please come hang out with me on Tumblr, I have a lot of stupid thoughts about comic books that I want to share with you, I'm at no-fun-zone.tumblr.com.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it, y'all! The last chapter. I can't believe it's done. Thank you to those of you who have stuck it out with me over the past, er, year and change. Apologies in advance if the smut here is terrible, I literally went on Wikipedia like, explain what a blow job is. Anyway, enjoy, and let me know what you think!

After firing off a few quick texts to their friends letting them know they were going home, Bucky and Steve managed to mostly untangle themselves for long enough to head in the direction of their apartment. On the walk back, Bucky kept his hand on the skin of Steve’s lower back, rubbing slow but insistent circles just below the waistband of Steve’s jeans. It felt so good to be allowed to have Bucky touch him like this – and not for anyone else’s benefit. 

When they got back to their building, Steve unlocked the front door and took Bucky’s hand, leading him up the stairs. When he stole a glance behind him, Bucky’s pupils were blown black, and he was grinning predatorily. Steve swallowed hard, and Bucky’s eyes went to his throat, licking his lips unconsciously. Steve had never had such a hard time unlocking the door, and when he fumbled the key in the lock, Bucky put his hand over Steve’s, and Steve shuddered as Bucky steadied his hand and opened the door. 

As soon as they were inside, they both kicked off their shoes, and Bucky grabbed Steve and pinned him up against the door, kissing him hungrily and working to unbutton his jeans.

“Buck,” Steve said breathlessly, “We’ve got to – fuck – let’s go to the bedroom now, or – ng, babe – we’re not going to make it at all.”

Bucky nipped at Steve’s jaw, growled possessively, and then lifted Steve off the ground. Steve instinctively wrapped his legs around Bucky, groaning in spite of himself.

“Fuck, this shouldn’t be so hot,” he said under his breath, and Bucky chuckled as he walked with Steve to his bedroom, somehow managing not to knock into any furniture, as he peppered Steve’s chest with open-mouthed kisses. Bucky laid Steve on the bed, and for a moment they just stared at each other, both breathing hard. Steve looked wrecked already, his erection obvious in his unzipped jeans, and Bucky took a moment to just watch him, practically leering as Steve squirmed under his gaze. 

“Come on, Buck, please,” Steve whined, his hands gripping at Bucky’s comforter unconsciously. 

“So pretty when you beg, Stevie,” Bucky said as he pulled off his tie and shirt, and then leaned across the bed to peel Steve’s jeans and boxers off him. He paused when the tubing of Steve’s pump, which was still clipped to his pocket, pulled taut.

“Fuck, Bucky, hold on,” Steve said, and unclipped the pump. Bucky raised an eyebrow as if to make sure that was ok, and Steve nodded fervently.

“Help me out here, sweetheart,” he said, motioning to Steve’s t-shirt. Steve scrambled to sit up and tug it off. 

“All right, your turn,” Steve said, pointing to Bucky’s pants, which were obviously tented. 

Bucky shook his head. “Mm, not yet, there’s something I want to do first,” he said, smirking, before he bracketed his hands around Steve’s hips and started kissing up the inside of Steve’s thigh. 

Steve let himself fall backwards onto the bed, and he landed with his head propped up on the pillows just enough to watch Bucky’s progress. Already nearly overwhelmed, Steve moaned at the sight, and Bucky smiled up at him, clearly pleased with himself. Before Steve could urge him to continue, he looked at Steve’s hard cock approvingly, and then suddenly the tight, wet heat of Bucky’s mouth was on him. 

Steve vaguely recalled that Bucky hadn’t been with another man since college, but he still gave head like a pro. Steve screwed his eyes shut and forced his hips not to thrust up into Bucky’s mouth, but even so he was on edge almost immediately. It felt like Bucky was everywhere: taking Steve in deep thrusts, then pulling off almost completely to suckle at the head of his dick, then pressing gentle kisses along the shaft. After what might have been seconds or hours, Bucky’s rhythm evened out, and Steve felt himself hitting the back of Bucky’s throat, while Bucky massaged circles against Steve’s perineum. When Steve felt Bucky’s finger moving toward his entrance he shouted for Bucky to stop.

Bucky pulled off and looked up at Steve lazily, his lips wet and swollen. “Was there a problem, Stevie?” Bucky asked, and his voice was so hoarse that Steve couldn’t bite back a moan. 

“Buck,” Steve panted, “shit, was gonna come, and I want… want you inside me. Please, fuck me baby.”

Bucky’s eyelashes fluttered at that. “Yeah, Stevie, whatever you want.” He pushed himself off the bed, the muscles in his arms flexing, and Steve licked his lips. Bucky finally unbuttoned his pants and pulled them off, revealing his hard cock bobbing against his stomach. “Grab the lube, sweetheart,” he said, kicking the pants off and crawling up the bed toward Steve.

Steve reached over to Bucky’s bedside table and pulled out a condom and the Astroglide Sharon had bought for them from the topmost drawer. “Guess we owe Sharon one, now,” Steve said, giggling a little.

Bucky groaned. “In the future, please don’t talk about our neighbor right before I fuck you.”

“Mm, noted,” Steve said. “Now, how do you want me?”

“Just like this sweetheart,” Bucky said, “Wanna see you.”

Steve was feeling boneless, so Bucky rearranged his legs until they were bent and draped across Bucky’s shoulders. Bucky slicked his fingers and began opening Steve with his index finger, all the while pressing reverent kisses to Steve’s abdomen. Steve squirmed, feeling overwhelmed by sensation.

“Shh, Stevie,” Bucky breathed, “Relax for me, baby.” Steve shuddered out a breath but obliged, and Bucky felt his finger slip further into Steve.

“Buck, ng, need more, need more of you.”

Bucky smirked at him and added a second finger and started making small scissoring motions. When Steve had been reduced to moans, Bucky added a third finger, found Steve’s prostate and began brushing his fingers against it again, and again, and again.

“Inside me. Now,” Steve demanded, impressed with himself that he’d managed even those three words.

Bucky ripped open the condom and rolled it onto his cock. “Ok sweetheart,” Bucky said, planting a kiss to Steve’s chest and sliding into him. 

Bucky and Steve moaned as Bucky slowly pushed in until he bottomed out. Bucky took a moment to let Steve catch his breath before he began thrusting carefully. 

“Harder, baby,” Steve said, “Can take it, fuck, give me more, please.”

“Goddamn Steve, how can I resist when you ask so sweet like that?” Bucky said, picking up his rhythm and taking Steve's cock into his hand. Steve let out a shuddering breath at the feel of Bucky’s hand on him, and Bucky took that as the encouragement he needed to begin stroking Steve in time with his thrusts.

“Buck, uh, Buck, not gonna last babe.”

“That’s ok Stevie, you can let go, wanna see it. Wanna see you come, sweetheart. Can you do that for me? Can you come for me, Stevie?”

Steve shuddered once more and then cried out, coming so hard his vision whited out. The feeling of Steve’s body contracting around Bucky’s cock was more than Bucky could stand, and after a few more thrusts he followed behind Steve, emptying himself into the condom. 

Spent, Bucky managed to pull out, tie off the condom and toss it into the garbage, before collapsing on top of Steve.

“Buck?”

“Hm, Stevie?” Bucky responded, feeling lighter than air and hanging onto wakefulness by a thread.

“You gotta get off me or we’re gonna be stuck together.”

“Mm, don’t care.”

“Well, you’re gonna care in the morning, I promise,” Steve said, chuckling a little.

“Ugh, fine,” Bucky conceded, rolling off of Steve and reaching around under the bed until he found a discarded t-shirt, and used it to clean them both. “Satisfied?”

“Yeah, that’s much better,” Steve said, smiling down at Bucky who was already falling asleep again. “Thanks, Buck.”

Bucky sleepily smiled at him, pulling him in until they were all tangled up. “Don’t forget your pump, honey,” Bucky said, before finally falling asleep. Steve rolled his eyes affectionately and grabbed the pump from the pocket of his jeans, clipping it back on.

“Good night, Buck,” Steve whispered, and let himself fall asleep, feeling totally loved and safe in Bucky’s arms. 

***

One Year Later

Steve’s alarm went off at 6 o’clock and he and Bucky both groaned as Steve reached over to silence it. The summer before the midterm elections Steve had been talking to Sam about how he wanted to get more involved, and Sam had connected him with Maria Hill, who had gotten Steve a position volunteering for Senator Fury’s reelection campaign. When Fury had won in November, Steve had been hired to work in his office full time, primarily helping to develop policy for the senator in his capacity as the chair of the Senate Committee on Education, Arts and Culture. It was a great job, but he knew he’d never get used to waking up so early.

Steve managed to get himself out of bed, but Bucky rolled over and shut his eyes again. Steve dressed as quietly as possible, but before he left their bedroom, Bucky blinked his eyes open.

“We’re still on for dinner tonight, right?” he asked sleepily.

“Yeah, Buck. Seven at the Donaldson, right?” 

“Mhm, don’t be late, pal.”

Steve chuckled. “Yeah, you either, don’t let Stark work you too hard today.”

Bucky smiled and nodded, and then fell back asleep. Steve watched him fondly for a moment, and then grabbed a quick breakfast and headed out to Senator Fury’s New York City office. 

As Steve’s days went, it wasn’t terribly eventful, although he still took a lot of satisfaction from being able to help Senator Fury’s constituents and reviewing public arts recommendations. Senator Pierce was in the process of trying to further dismantle health care protections, but since the Democrats had won control of the House and the Senate at the midterms, all these efforts had failed, and some measures to institute a public option were beginning to gain support. 

Since he had started working full time, Steve finally had full health benefits, which he had taken advantage of to get a fully integrated insulin pump and glucose monitoring system – his A1Cs had never been better. It felt good not to have to rely on Bucky, although they’d stayed married, even as they decided they would take their relationship as slowly as they needed to. In the end, they hadn’t needed to go slow at all – once their feelings were out in the open, they both knew there was no going back, and there wasn’t going to be anyone else for either of them. 

A few days after they’d first gotten together, they had Sam and Natasha over and explained what had happened. Instead of surprise, Sam and Nat looked at each other and groaned. “Finally,” she had said, and Sam just shook his head. Once they had recovered, they congratulated Steve and Bucky on “finally getting their heads out of their asses,” in Sam’s words. 

Of course there were ups and downs, and it took them a while to figure out exactly how to be a couple together. But it had been a good year, all things considered, and Steve was looking forward to celebrating what they had decided should be their anniversary, opting to celebrate the night they finally got together instead of the night they got married.

Steve had been looking forward to their dinner all week. The Donaldson was upscale but relaxed, and on Friday nights they had live jazz. Maria teased Steve a little as he fixed his hair in the big mirror in the office’s entryway, but he just blushed a little and mostly managed to ignore her. At 6, he grabbed his things and wished her a good weekend, then headed back to Brooklyn.

When Steve got to the restaurant, Bucky was already there, at a table toward the back of the restaurant by a window. Steve couldn’t help but smile when he saw him, still hardly able to believe that Bucky had chosen him. Bucky flustered as Steve approached the table, but relaxed when Steve kissed him and then took the seat across from him. Bucky had ordered a bottle of champagne, and it was cooling on ice beside the table.

“You really went all out tonight, huh?” Steve said, nodding at the champagne.

Bucky flushed. “Well, it is our anniversary, gotta treat my husband right on our anniversary.” Bucky flagged down a passing waiter, who obligingly popped the cork on the bottle and poured them each a glass. They clinked glasses, but before Steve could take a sip, Bucky reached for his hand. 

“Listen, Stevie, there’s, uh, something I wanted to say to you tonight.”

Steve put his glass down and took Bucky’s hand, smiling and silently encouraging him to continue. 

Bucky cleared his throat and took a deep breath. “So, I know we’ve been together for a year, and, well, married for a little longer than that, but I’ve been thinking, you’ve got health insurance now, and there’s really no need for us to be married anymore.”

Steve could feel the blood draining from his face, but Bucky held his hand tighter and looked at him imploringly. 

“No, sweetheart, no, that’s not what I’m saying. I just…” Bucky looked frustrated for a moment, then got up from his chair, and kneeled down beside Steve. “We don’t have to be married, because you don’t need me in a practical way anymore. But I don’t wanna stop being married to you, Steve.” Bucky took Steve’s left hand in his, rubbing his finger over Steve’s wedding ring. “What I’m trying to say is, Steven Grant Rogers, will you stay married to me?”

Steve grinned and pulled Bucky up. “Of course, baby,” he whispered into Bucky’s ear. “Of course I will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for reading! You all have been so encouraging, I feel like I should post my entire dissertation on AO3. (This fic, by the way, is longer than my master's thesis) I'd love it if you'd come hang out on tumblr with me here: https://no-fun-zone.tumblr.com/ or on Twitter @amsavitt
> 
> Also remember to get involved in local and state politics! It's pretty easy to do and super rewarding, and a lot of candidates are going to need your support for the mid-terms (and obviously vote if you're 18 or older!). The Republicans are bad at their jobs and they haven't been able to dismantle the ACA or do a lot of the other bullshit they wanted to, but we shouldn't be complacent, so get out there and do your civic duty!


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